Elgar’s secret passion
Elgar: Symphony No2 Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko Onyx, out now HHHHH
This superb album may be the best yet from Liverpool’s resident Elgarian, Vasily Petrenko, and the brilliantly responsive orchestra he has fashioned on Merseyside. Even if you have a recording of Elgar’s Second, you should get this one, because Petrenko’s understanding of this elusive and problematic piece is so profound.
Why so? Well, Elgar was not what he seemed; the bristling moustache and the military manner that stares out from all his photos conceal a deeply complex man, whose many deep-seated insecurities are written out in his finest music. These insecurities led him into a happy and successful marriage to a much older woman, who, as the daughter of an army general, gave him the social status he craved.
And she also believed in his genius. As my dear friend Michael Kennedy once observed: ‘Elgar wrote nothing of substance before he met her, and nothing of substance after her death.’
But Lady Elgar’s devotion did not stop Elgar’s yearnings, especially relevant to this symphony. His (probably) unrequited passion for Lady Alice Stuart-Wortley, the fragrant daughter of the painter Mill a is, and the wife of a Conservative politician, lies at the heart of the creative impulse for this symphony.
‘Rarely, rarely, comes t thou, Spirit of Delight!’ These lines of Shelley are stuck at the top of the score. He told her that this was ‘your symphony’. And he later wrote that in this work (and two others) ‘I have shewn myself ’.
Psychiatrist’s-couch stuff, all this. No wonder the audience at the premiere were stunned. It was not what they were expecting at all.
And yet, for maybe half a century now, the Cello Concerto has been seen as Elgar’s most powerful work; a piece that speaks to us of our own insecurities, and whose angst sounds very contemporary.
All this is true of the Second Symphony, and Petrenko gets it.
He takes his time – almost an hour – but the music never sprawls. Indeed, the scherzo – the third movement marked ‘presto’ – is really well delineated at the composer’s chosen speed. But Petrenko still finds time to bring out incidental details, like the percussive hammering in the middle that, he seems to be suggesting, is premonitory of the carnage shortly to come in World War I.
The real magic in this performance happens in the first movement. After the very direct opening, inspired by Mozart’s 40th Symphony and Brahms’s Third, Petrenko takes us on an eerie tour of Elgar’s mind, establishing a dreamy and rapt mood, full of insights that hold the key to what this symphony is really all about. Magnificent.
‘He takes his time – almost an hour – but the music never sprawls’