Elgar Falstaff, Op. 68. Elegy, Op. 58. The Sanguine Fan, Op. 81. English Northern Philharmonia / David Lloyd-Jones.

Naxos (Super budget price) (CD) 8 553879 (57 minutes: DDD).

David Lloyd-Jones presides over a consistently involving, honest-to-goodness account of Falstaff. Here is a more propulsive view of Elgar’s masterpiece than Andrew Davis’s outstanding recent Teldec version, not without occasional moments of distracting bluster (for instance, Lloyd-Jones’s handling of the tremendous Gadshill double-ambush is perhaps more excitable than genuinely, coherently exciting), yet still full of engaging character, fresh-faced purpose and agreeable spontaneity. Felicities noted on first hearing (and there are quite a few) include those irresistibly physical gales of laughter which follow Falstaff’s first boastful soliloquy (try from 8'25" into track 2), a superbly hushed and concentrated transition into the first dream interlude (from 11'06" in the same track), to say nothing of the trenchancy of the ENP’s lower strings in the scarecrow army’s battle music (track 4, 1'22" onwards).

I also revelled in Lloyd-Jones’s swaggering treatment of Hal’s now-regal reappearance (track 6, from 2'25" – altogether more satisfying here than on Davis’s otherwise pretty irreproachable version), while the fat knight’s subsequent hurtful rejection generates a properly giddy thrust. The epilogue is perhaps not as poignant as on some distinguished predecessors (most notably Barbirolli, Davis and the composer himself), but Lloyd-Jones sees to it that we are not emotionally short-changed during these yearningly vulnerable measures. Throughout, the English Northern Philharmonia respond with enthusiasm and hard-working application (excellent work in particular from principal bassoon and trombones), and the whole enterprise radiates a rude health and homely glow worlds removed from, say, the manicured brilliance of Rattle’s extraordinarily dapper (and, to my ears, frustratingly self-aware) CBSO reading.

A thoroughly likeable Falstaff, then, and the couplings are rewarding too. Though the Elegy somewhat jarringly follows the main offering after a gap of only three seconds, the actual performance is a memorable one, the ENP strings responding with great tenderness and truly sostenuto warmth. Composed in 1917, Elgar’s ballet score The Sanguine Fan remains a rarity and this is the first recording we’ve had of it since Bryden Thomson’s just over a decade ago. Lloyd-Jones does full justice to this winsome, often entrancing score: if the orchestral playing is fractionally less polished and tonally lustrous than that of the LPO under Thomson, Lloyd-Jones’s more flowing conception undoubtedly takes the palm in terms of choreographic flair.

Naxos’s impressively ample and nicely balanced recording emanates from Leeds University’s Great Hall and is less resonant than on some previous releases from these same artists.

AA