This is a very strange performance of Elgar’s Second Symphony. Barenboim’s first effort for Sony, made decades ago, was a somewhat flabby but basically traditional view of the work. Well, the flab has gone, as has much of the tradition, but you get a sense that the baby has been thrown out with the bath water. The first movement starts off like a rocket, swiftly propulsive, but the balances, decisively tilted toward the winds and brass at the expense of the strings, are off-kilter. Textures are super clear, while the music’s dynamic range sounds relatively squashed. In the central development section Barenboim sucks every shred of atmosphere out of those “malign influence” episodes. Elgar’s musical portrait of decadent evil has been utterly defanged. There’s also a tendency to rush the climaxes: the moment of recapitulation as well as the coda. Why? What is the point? Proof of the impotence of Elgar’s Edwardian aesthetic? Whatever the reason, it sounds wrong.
The second movement also suffers from a serious lack of Elgarian “nobilmente” at its climaxes, with the elegiac oboe solo the second time around excessively prominent and insensitive to its place in the ongoing funeral procession. Barenboim zips through the scherzo to the point that its coda becomes a mad scramble, the orchestra clearly having difficulty getting through it. And what excuse can there be for that weak central climax–it is seriously underplayed and lacking in power, never mind terror. Elgar told us verbally what he wants here: a hammering pulsation to the point of pain. That’s what he scored, but it’s not what Barenboim gives us. As for the finale, well, it probably goes best, and the textural angularity that characterizes the entire performance makes more sense in the big contrapuntal episode about five minutes in; but there’s little feeling of culmination in the autumnal closing pages.
I don’t for a minute believe the myth that Elgar doesn’t export, and I welcome unconventional views of the work. Great music can sustain differing viewpoints and God knows we could use a fresh take on music soaked in tradition, but this edgy, unsettled, unidiomatic, and in the end undercharacterized interpretation turns out to be a genuine letdown from an artist who ought to know better.
