Elgar: Sea Pictures. Falstaff

Daniel Barenboim has been conducting the music of Edward Elgar since the ’70s and, during the 2010s, has returned to the composer’s work with his Staatskapelle Berlin. The results have been mightily impressive. First, there’s Barenboim’s broad, wonderfully generous approach, and then there’s the glorious playing of this opera orchestra: You can feel them listening to each other with acute attention. Elīna Garanča, one of very few non-native English-speakers to have recorded the Sea Pictures, sings beautifully, her voice full of color. And Falstaff, that rich, mellow portrait of Shakespeare’s Fat Knight, is magnificent—strongly characterized and full of affection.