1. Gennady Rozhdestvensky with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1980.
2. Edward Downes with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in 1993.
3. Mark Elder with the Halle Orchestra in 2003.
(BBC broadcast and digital downloads, FLACs, cover and inlay scans for the Downes and Elder, plus booklet for the Elder)
02. - 05. Edward Elgar - Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major, op.63 [58'50]
BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gennady Rozhdestvensky.
BBC recording at Corn Exchange, Bedford, on 20 December 1980. Broadcast on 2 February 1981, flacs. Recording kindly provided by friend Barty
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Downes.
Naxos 8.550635 (issued 1994)
Recorded at New Broadcasting House, Manchester in March 1993. Recording engineer: Don Hartridge; Producer: Brian Pidgeon. Digital download, flacs; cover and inlay scans only.
02. Percy Bysshe Shelley - Song* [2'02]
03. - 06. Edward Elgar - Symphony No. 2 in E-flat major, op.63 [58'39]
Mark Elder- reader*; Halle Orchestra conducted by Mark Elder.
Halle HLL 7507 (issued 2008)
Recorded at BBC Studio 7, New Broadcasting House and Bridgewater Hall*^, Manchester in July 2003 and June 2004*. Recording engineers: Simon Eadon and Stuart Kempster*; Producer: Andrew Keener. Digital download, flacs; cover, inlay and booklet scans.
Downloads from MEGA,
As with the recordings of the First Symphony posted here on MIMIC two weeks ago, none of these three recordings would replace my current favourites for the Second Symphony - Vernon Handley with London Philharmonic (EMI/CfP) or, more recently, Sakari Oramo with Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (BIS) - but they all come very close indeed.
For me, Rozhdestvensky's performance of the Second is considerably finer than his First Symphony and he is very much at home here with well-judged tempi and, again, excellent pointing of details in the orchestration.
Edward Downes' was, of course, noted as an Elgar specialist - he even named his son Caractacus - and this is one of the great recorded performances of the work; strangely overlooked in many surveys. Unfortunately, Naxos already had a fine recording of the First Symphony in their catalogue (conducted by George Hurst with the same orchestra), so we never got a recording of Downes leading the earlier work. Unusually for Naxos, this download doesn't come with a booklet - nor is one available on their website.
As with the First Symphony, Mark Elder's recording has received a mixed reception but I find it very fine. Elgar included lines from Percy Shelley's poem Song as a preface to the score of the Second Symphony and Elder reads the complete poem here. Aficionados of David Hurwitz's idiosyncratic reviews will be delighted to note that the reading of the poem was the only thing he liked about this disc. In Elgar's masterpiece Introduction and Allegro, Elder and the Halle players come close to matching the classic John Barbirolli / Allegri Quartet / Sinfonia of London recording for EMI.
My thanks again to friend Barty from another online forum for his help in providing the broadcast recording for this post.