Elgar: Sea Pictures; Symphony No 1 | Classical review

Released in tribute to Vernon Handley, who died in 2008, these Elgar performances are taken from a concert presented by the Elgar Society at London's Royal Festival Hall in 1984. For fans of the mezzo Janet Baker the disc will be a recommendation in itself, for her account of Sea Pictures is quite glorious, more rapturously beautiful and intense even than her famous EMI recording with John Barbirolli, and a perfect example of how a great interpreter can make a work transcend its own weaknesses. The recording is by no means ideal – Baker's voice is rather recessed against the orchestra, though things improve as the cycle goes on – but it is much more sharply focused for Handley's outstanding account of the First Symphony. He projects a fiercely uncompromising view of Elgar,  racked and anguished in both the first and third movements, making the return of the opening march to crown the finale into a deeply ambiguous triumph.