Froissart, Elgar’s first truly Elgarian orchestral work, is the joker in this pack: at nearly a quarter of an hour it’s hardly a miniature; more important, it breaks free from the salon sensibility of the other repertoire on the disc. Judd’s acumen here is, if anything, even sharper. In lesser hands, Froissart can sound like a lumpy and ill-integrated piece, one in which the forward-looking ideas haven’t quite been digested; but Judd manages to make it work—not by seeking to unify its ideas, but rather by heightening its contradictions. The opening 45 seconds or so set out the general approach. The hard, bright, sharply profiled opening leads you to expect a tough modernist reading; but in a bold stroke of interpretive alchemy, the ground shifts and the musical landscape is transformed by an infusion of rubato and portamento that seems the product of a different aesthetic world entirely. And so it goes, as Judd plays up contrasts of color, dynamics, and tempo in ways that always keep us on the edge. Those looking for a smooth ride may be disconcerted—but few performances I know so clearly elucidate the music’s bifurcated character.

It’s not clear why the Minuet has been interpolated into the middle of the Characteristic Pieces, but otherwise the production is fine. All in all, a more interesting CD than might at first appear. Warmly recommended.

FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz