It is 16 years since Tortelier recorded the Elgar concerto for EMI with Boult in a performance that had always seemed to me rather too prosaic until it was transferred to CD, where the recording-quality itself was revealed to better effect and one heard more highlights in the playing than had seemed to be there originally. His interpretation has not changed essentially since 1972, but this new recording, with slightly freer orchestral direction by Sir Charles Groves, has a freshness and vitality that suggest Tortelier has pointedly re-studied the score.
Allowing for the occasional expressive rit. and a rather drastic piu mosso at the end of the Scherzo, Tortelier's playing is admirably faithful to Elgar's markings. The work's emotional impact is projected without any maudlin sentiment. His playing of the Adagio, for instance, is all the more moving for being so simple and unaffected (and how beautifully Groves and the RPO treat the accompaniment here). Like the composer, Tortelier reserves the fullest weight for the finale. In this movement he is marginally more secure in technique in the Boult recording, but I prefer the noble expansiveness of this new performance. ASV have given it a bright, resonant recording (a church acoustic), ideally balanced, to my ears.
The same lofty musicianship and quest for beauty of sound are encountered in the Rococo Variations. Tortelier's earlier recording (also 1972 and reissued last month on CD) with the Northern Sinfonia, conducted by his son, is excellent, but again I feel that a new joy in the music itself can be heard in the later performance, which is characterized throughout by warmth and elegance. It is a pity that the opportunity was not taken to record the original version instead of Fitzenhagen's concoction, but at least there is some compensation in the addition of Dvorak's charming Rondo in G minor, in which one can hear faint pre-echoes of the concerto that was to follow a year or two later. In every sense, this is a celebratory recording and perhaps a reviewer may be allowed to extend congratulations and thanks to a great artist.'