Lasting a provocative 55'20'', this healthy-sounding, beautifully balanced 1977-8 Abbey Road production enshrines what must be about the most expansive account of the Elgar ever committed to disc. Listening to it for the purposes of my February 1998 “Collection”, I came away with decidedly mixed feelings. The present excellent remastering for CD naturally prompts a reappraisal, but I still have problems.
As a longstanding admirer of Ida Haendel’s magnificent 1977 coupling of the Britten and Walton concertos with Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth SO (5/78 – now an unmissable mid-price reissue on EMI British Composers), I approached her Elgar with the highest expectations. She brings all her customary temperament, unbridled passion and golden tone to bear, but there are also some technical blemishes which would, I think, prove distracting on repetition. Even though her at times “wilfully idiosyncratic” and “cavalier” manner irked me less this time round, there’s still something essential missing from her playing – a nobility or, perhaps most of all, the unbearable intimacy of feeling in which this of all concertos abounds.
Set down in four separate sessions over a period of nearly nine months, this was Boult’s third and final commercial recording of the Elgar. Although the 88-year-old maestro uncovers a wealth of felicitous detail, there are moments of uncomfortable slackness too. Concentration falters in the central Andante especially, and it’s striking that, although Kennedy and Rattle are even more daringly spacious in this movement (14'22'' as against 13'49''), the newcomers’ serene conception feels by far and away the shorter of the two. This is, granted, an infinitely more characterful accompaniment than the one Boult provided for Menuhin in 1965-6, but the grip, co-ordination and unfettered eloquence of Sir Adrian’s direction on Campoli’s 1954 Decca version are not readily matched here.
As a coupling, Testament give us the towering Chaconne from Bach’s D minor Partita in a compellingly individual reading which, as EG made plain in his original review (1/97), is simply mesmeric from start to finish. For the main work, however, unless you’re a Haendel and/or Boult ‘completist’, I’d look elsewhere.'