Five years have passed since the first performance of Anthony Payne's completion of the sketches for Elgar's Third Symphony, and it is still enormously impressive. It is also among the most successful new British works of the 1990s.
The received idea that Elgar's sketches for the Third Symphony are weak and repetitive has withered in the face of the evidence. The original material is never less than attractive; at best it is vintage Elgar. As for Payne's completion, its main strength is that it is obviously the work of a composer, not a scholarly restorer. Although Elgar's musical seeds have been transplanted to a different kind of soil, what they have grown into there is so noble and stirring that the question of who is responsible for what hardly seems to matter. The creaky structure of the finale may be the result of Payne being too faithful to Elgar's written instructions, but the slow movement could come to be seen as one of the great tragic statements of 20th-century English music. That was certainly the impression after the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's performance.
Conductor Sakari Oramo took a new approach to the final climax, with its grinding, repetitive march-rhythms, slowing down considerably before starting the long crescendo. It was gripping. Payne's ending (Elgar left no clues as to how he saw the end) made more sense than in any other account I've heard - the true emotional and logical conclusion of this wide-ranging work. Oramo's reading as a whole was strikingly purposeful, but there was affection too. Telling details were allowed time to expand, and the enigmatic second movement - called by Elgar "In place of Scherzo" - was enriched by the elegant dance-like character Oramo brought to so many of its leading themes.
In the first half of the concert, Oramo's account of Brahms's Third Symphony was full of good ideas, but it sounded as though it needed one more rehearsal for them all to become musical flesh. By Saturday's concert, when the programme is repeated, it may have come to full life.
• Further performance on Saturday. Box office: 0121-780 3333.
