Barenboim / Staatskapelle Berlin ELGAR Symphony No. 2

This is a superb, in fact I feel justified in calling it unequivocally a great, Elgar Two. It's difficult to know where to start in listing its excellences -- the playing of the Berlin Staatskapelle, without one ounce of unnecessary emotion yet performing as if they've had the music in their blood all their lives? The warmth and yet crystal clarity of the recording, in which every counterpoint, every subsidiary voice in Elgar's hugely complex score is perfectly audible and ideally balanced? But one must start and finish with Barenboim's interpretation, his first in this work for 40 years, with which he burnishes his already impressive and long-established credentials as an Elgarian . . . this is a marvellously full-blooded reading of the Symphony, full of drama and passion and rich-hued colour . . . [Barenboim] also understands perfectly Elgar's inwardness, the moment where the dynamic drops to "ppp" and he seems almost to lose himself in the hush of his own thought. Barenboim certainly makes the most of the haunted quality of the first movement's development section. The celebrated oboe counter-melody in the "Larghetto" has seldom sounded so plangent, while Barenboim's "scherzo" is demonic in its remorseless forward drive, preparing for a complex and exciting finale in which those slashing off-beat chords at the return of the theme have all the necessary impulsiveness and confidence. This must be one of the finest performances currently on offer, and a wonderful follow-up to Barenboim's Elgar Cello Concerto with Alisa Weilerstein, winner of this year's BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Year.

[Record Review / Calum MacDonald, BBC Music Magazine (London) / 01. July 2014]