Elgar Symphony No 2
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Edward Elgar
Label: DG
Magazine Review Date: 2/1989
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 65
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 423 085-2GH

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 2 |
Edward Elgar, Composer
Edward Elgar, Composer Giuseppe Sinopoli, Conductor Philharmonia Orchestra |
Composer or Director: Edward Elgar
Label: DG
Magazine Review Date: 2/1989
Media Format: Cassette
Media Runtime: 0
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 423 085-4GH

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 2 |
Edward Elgar, Composer
Edward Elgar, Composer Giuseppe Sinopoli, Conductor Philharmonia Orchestra |
Author:
The first thing to say about this recording, apart from its technical excellence, is that the performance lasts 65 minutes, which is ten minutes longer than the average and even longer than certain other individual performances. It is devastatingly slow, much too slow, and for many listeners that will be enough to damn it out of hand. I confess that my reaction after first hearing it was a mixture of bewilderment and rage, but that did not seem a good frame of mind in which to write a review, so I listened again, and again.
I cannot pretend that I like it much more now, but I do not believe, as some of my colleagues evidently do, that one can dismiss Sinopoli as a musician of no account. Plainly, he is a highly intelligent conductor who looks at a score and gives us what he finds there, with no pre-conceptions. But he has mistaken Elgar's nobilmente for Bruckner's maestoso. The slow tempos occur mainly in the first two movements. He turns the Larghetto into a dirge, draining it of its noble anguish, and in the first movement all Elgar's indications of
While I cannot pretend that this recording will often be taken down from my shelf, it is of interest to hear Sinopoli's remarkable exposure of the work's textures, particularly the sinister quality of the scoring for the deep brass, the rhythmical lightness of his start to the third movement and the beauty of the cellos, especially in the first movement. But the art of interpreting an Elgar symphony is to cohere all those short melodic repetitions and sequences into a spontaneous whole which then sounds like a broadly conceived panoramic canvas. This is what has eluded Sinopoli. From him we get the trees, but not (as yet) the wood. The orchestral playing, by the way, is superb.'
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.

Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
Subscribe
Gramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.