Symphony No. 2 (Elgar) - Recordings

Recordings

The symphony was first recorded complete in 1927 by His Master's Voice, part of the EMI group, conducted by the composer. This recording was later reissued on LP and later on CD. There was no further recording for eighteen years, until Sir Adrian Boult and the BBC Symphony Orchestra made a recordings of the symphony in 1945. Since then there have been more than twenty-four new recordings. All the studio recordings of the symphony have been made in the UK. The non-British conductors who have recorded the work in the studio (they include Sir Georg Solti, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Bernard Haitink, André Previn, Daniel Barenboim and Leonard Slatkin) have all done so with one of the London orchestras. Live performances from Russia and Australia have been recorded for CD, conducted by Yevgeny Svetlanov and Vladimir Ashkenazy respectively. Of the British conductors, Boult recorded the work five times, and Sir John Barbirolli and Sir Andrew Davis have each made two recordings.

BBC Radio 3's "Building a Library" feature has broadcast comparative reviews of all available recordings of the symphony on three occasions since the 1980s. The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music, 2008, carries three pages of reviews of recordings of the work. The recordings given the top recommendation by both the BBC and The 'Penguin Guide are the 1972 Decca version by Solti and the London Philharmonic, coupled with the First Symphony, and the 1981 EMI recording by Vernon Handley with the same orchestra.