Elgar Symphony No. 1: Sir Adrian Boult

[maestrob]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI--WUwVfZw

Symphony No 1 in A flat Major op 55
by Edward Elgar
1. Andante nobilmente e semplice-Allegro
2. Allegro molto
3. Adagio
4. Lento-Allegro
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Adrian Boult
IX.1976

[Lance]

Boult was a superb "Elgarist," in MHO, and I think Barbirolli, too.

[Rach3]

I have an EMI cd with Boult.

While I am not a big symphonist, Elgar's 2nd, although very long, is more interesting ,to me, although apparently not nearly as successful with the public as the 1st, either then or now.

Fww, here is recent live of the 2nd with Manze and the North German Radio Orchestra in Hanover:
https://auvio.rtbf.be/media/concert-con ... 0h-3165191

[Belle]

I agree with your comments on Elgar #2. The Larghetto of Elgar's Symphony #2 is the finest utterance he put into symphonic form. The rest doesn't appeal to me. I'm just not sure Elgar's aesthetic fitted well into symphonic form: these were somehow over-wrought and too idiomatic. His 'Enigma Variations' are superb.

Daniel Harding's tempi here are too slow in the first movement; I do hope he pilots the Airbus 320 at a faster pace!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY7vaUhxhDY

Compare the Larghetto with Solti/LPO: a more cantabile style, I feel. Yet there is a dark, ominous underbelly in this movement which Solti brings out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO8s2Jf76dc

[mikealdren]

This has long been my favourite performance of a work I love dearly. Boult captures the nature of the piece perfectly.

[diegobueno]

Elgar's 2nd, although very long, is more interesting ,to me, although apparently not nearly as successful with the public as the 1st, either then or now.

I am still waiting to catch on with the 1st, but I'm sure if I sit down with it, it will impress itself upon me. I've enjoyed the 2nd for about 30 years and always manage to appreciate it a little bit more.

Elgar's orchestration always reminds me of those pictures your see of homes in the Victorian/Edwardian eras, chock-a-brock with furnishings and stuff, and draped everywhere with heavy fabrics. One almost never hears a solo woodwind or brass instrument in Elgar, for that matter one rarely hears a solo string instrument. Winds and brass are used to color the tutti sound of the orchestra, but always its a tutti sound you're hearing. The orchestra always has a sepia tone, like old photographs of bearded gentlemen who never smile. Within those confines, the writing is quite effective, though. Like Mahler, he often uses instruments just briefly to highlight a small piece of the melodic line.

I always imagine Elgar himself as the "narrator" of whatever story the 2nd symphony has to tell (yes, I'm continuing to hijack this thread to bring it around to the 2nd instead of the 1st symphony). The opening music of the 2nd sounds like something out of the old newsreels they used to show between movies in theaters, the kind of music that would be used to accompany parading troops headed to battle. I can almost hear the announcer's voice-over extolling the pride of the people in the glorious feats about to be accomplished by Britain's brave young men. I can see Elgar looking out his window at the parade and sighing, knowing that the public's naive enthusiasm will only end in disillusionment. In the coda of the last movement, I can see Elgar four years later, watching the parade of flag-draped coffins, and lamenting that the England he grew up in and loved would never come back.

Elgar actually composed the 2nd in 1911 a few years before the Great War. I'm clearly reading something into the music that isn't there. But perhaps he was a prophet.