Elgar: Symphony No. 1 / Falstaff (recorded 1930-1932)

"It's a joy to be reintroduced to these wonderful performances - with the Violin Concerto, the summits of Elgar's recordings of his own music. We have been living in an age of outstanding Elgar conductors - Davis (Colin and Andrew), Elder, Barenboim, Hickox, Vernon Handley, Andrew Litton, Adrian Brown - but none of them surpasses, or even quite matches, the best of the composer's interpretations. The strong, purposeful tread of the symphony's opening, straightforward and sublime, the subtlety of the movement's close, the scherzo's sheer electricity, the adagio's astonishing fluidity (scarcely two bars are the same length) and its almost unbearable expressive intensity: these are landmarks in an Elgarian's experience. As for the captivating Falstaff, recorded two years later, in 1932, it is hard to imagine a more brilliantly convincing reading." Sunday Times, 15th February 2009 ****

Before its sensational première in 1908, Hans Richter, the work's dedicatee and first conductor, acclaimed Elgar's Symphony No. 1 as 'the greatest symphony of modern times'. Although Falstaff is often treated merely comically, Elgar's virtuosic tone poem presents him and Prince Hal with a psychological insight truly worthy of Shakespeare. On these historic and thrillingly realized recordings, made between 1930 and 1932, there really is no match for the composer's insight and instinctive way with his own works, especially when conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, of whom he had been principal conductor from 1911 to 1913.