Philharmonia Orchestra plays Elgar * * * *
at Symphony Hall
Review by Norman Stinchcombe

This concert was another fine contribution to Elgar’s 150th anniversary celebrations – crowned by a noble and passionate performance of his first symphony.

Sir Andrew Davis’s recording of the work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra is highly rated but this was even finer, benefiting from the Philharmonia’s richer string tone which added weight and depth to the sound. Sir Andrew, unlike his namesake Sir Colin Davis, did not over-egg the pudding so that the grand opening theme flowed in a stately manner rather than being a world-weary trudge.

Anyone still under the misapprehension that Elgar was a sabre-rattling jingoist should have heard the ferocious second movement march which, under Davis’s baton, was as deliberately brutal and soulless as anything in Shostakovich.

It was underpinned by the Philharmonia’s impressive battery of brass and percussion. In between this and the swaggering finale – whose opening bass drum rolls and Brucknerian tremonlando strings were for once genuinely sinister – was a slow movement of ineffable beauty, the still, calm centre around which the symphony revolved.

Jane Irwin was the warm-toned and forthright mezzo-soprano soloist in Elgar’s Sea Pictures, her diction admirably clear but emotionally a little too reticent. The Sea Slumber Song was very moving with Irwin’s floated vocal lines soaring over the pulsing orchestral waves, ending in a hushed "Goodnight!".

The lighter In Haven, a setting of verses by Elgar’s beloved wife Alice, was also touching in its belief in the certitude of eternal love.

There was an interesting novelty to open the concert, the Prelude and Angel’s Farewell, a purely orchestral scissors-and-paste job from the opening and closing minutes of the Dream ofGerontius.

The prelude was particularly effective in evoking a Tristan-like crepuscular atmosphere.