Elgar: Sea Pictures & Falstaff

The Times 30th July 2020
Barenboim spotlights the work’s changing colours so vividly that he risks turning this multilayered trip through the soul and character of England’s past into just a symphonic showpiece. Yet he also makes the work structurally cohere more convincingly than it usually does...Garanca lacks some of Baker’s subtleties and doesn’t articulate words as clearly, especially when singing fortissimo. Yet she has her tenderly phrased moments, and never gets drowned in the swelling waves with Barenboim’s musicians.