Elgar (1857-1934)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I went through a" Road to Damascus" transformation over Elgar, when in my late teens. All this talk of Elgar being up there with the great composers was something I considered a delusion, by British people who wanted to believe it. I had seen Barbirolli conduct the Enigma Variations, and had been bored by the experience. Rummaging through my father's 78s did nothing to change my opinion. It wasn't until I heard Maurice Handford conduct the 1st symphony that I realised how wrong I'd been. The Hallé programme notes were a great help (written by Michael Kennedy and containing musical quotations). From then on, I couldn't get enough Elgar, and nothing has changed that view for over 50 years.

The use of musical quotations in programme notes was quite common then, and I think dropping it was a mistake. If people can't read music, they can either skip the quotations or learn to read it.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The use of musical quotations in programme notes was quite common then, and I think dropping it was a mistake. If people can't read music, they can either skip the quotations or learn to read it.

Musical quotations of important themes in programme notes and books on Music was one of the most useful aids to my learning how to read Music in my pre- and early teens.

As for Elgar - there are half-a-dozen works of his that mean as much to me as any other Music (the Second Symphony taking pride of place); another dozen-or-so that I quite get on with; but the rest I am indifferent to.

[Stanley Stewart]

Coincidentally, I've been adding to my Elgarian collection during the past week by extending my DVD collection; Elgar, Ken Russell's Monitor documentary, Man Behind the Mask etc and have now added an off-air DVD, Proms 2010 performance of the 1st Symphony, BBC Scottish SO/Martyn Brabbins with Howell's Hymnus Paradisi as an opener. As I was preparing a DVD cover, A on 3, unexpectedly broadcast a new CD rec of Sym No 1, BBCSO/Edward Gardner, due for release in April. A sudden dash for my recorder brought forward this date for me!

My early experience of Elgar and the goose-pimple factor was during WW2, approx 1942, when Pomp & Circumstance No 1 was played at a church concert during an air raid and I wondered why the audience rose to their feet as it started. Shortly afterwards, I saw the film Smilin' Through (1941) and Jeanette McDonald's spirited rendition of Land of Hope & Glory made me a convert. Give me a child at an impressionable age...

Alongside a DVD transfer, I've also been revisiting the expanded second edition of Michael Kennedy's Portrait of Elgar (1982) and his articulate analysis of the Enigma Variations, the choral compositions and the two symphonies is enlightening, moving and inspiring. Quite startled to read about the first performance at a Halle concert in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 3 Dec 1908. Jaeger was too ill so the programme note was written by Ernest Newman, and Walford Davies also wrote a preliminary article about it. The big surprise came later:

" After the extremely beautiful and poignantly expressive slow movement the composer was called on to the platform to bow several times to a crowd that was almost beside itself with enthusiasm. Again this scene was repeated at the close, and from none was the applause more hearty than from the orchestral players themselves, who rose as one man and cheered Elgar to the echo. No English work had ever before received such rapturous and immediate acclaim. In the audience on that historic evening was a nineteen-year old Manchester youth, Neville Cardus, who many years later put into words the significance of the event:
Those of us who were students were excited to hear at last an English composer addressing us in a spacious way, speaking a language which was European and not provincial. No English symphony existed then, at least not big enough to make a show of comparison with a symphony by Beethoven or Brahms and go in the programme of a concert side by side with the acknowledged masterpieces, and not be dwarfed at once into insignificance....I cannot hope, at this time of day, to describe the pride taken in Elgar by young English students of that far-away epoch..."

[ahinton]

I went through a" Road to Damascus" transformation over Elgar, when in my late teens. All this talk of Elgar being up there with the great composers was something I considered a delusion, by British people who wanted to believe it. I had seen Barbirolli conduct the Enigma Variations, and had been bored by the experience. Rummaging through my father's 78s did nothing to change my opinion. It wasn't until I heard Maurice Handford conduct the 1st symphony that I realised how wrong I'd been. The Hallé programme notes were a great help (written by Michael Kennedy and containing musical quotations). From then on, I couldn't get enough Elgar, and nothing has changed that view for over 50 years.

The use of musical quotations in programme notes was quite common then, and I think dropping it was a mistake. If people can't read music, they can either skip the quotations or learn to read it.

Curiously, it was the First Symphony that converted me rapidly from seriously doubting Thomas to ardent admirer, after I'd been dragged to a performance of it against what I mistakenly thought was my better judgement after hearing only P&C1, Salut d'Amour, Cockaigne and a couple of other pot-boilers and reading some stuff that had convinced me that the composer was an antediluvian pomp-and-circumstantial English parochialist-cum-imperialist jingo-monger whose scores were probably all coloured pink (and had I also suffered Fringes of the Fleet and the halfpenny-dreadful Crown of Injah I'd almost certainly have refused to attend under any circumstances), so I owe it to my deep fondness for the person who persuaded me to go that I realised just minutes into the symphony that I could not have been more misinformed nor Elgar himself more ignorantly misjudged. The Violin Concerto followed soon after that symphony and then the even finer Second Symphony - surely one of his greatest achievements - shortly after that, all written when he was living in Hereford (near where I am now) where one can only assume that there must have been something in the waters of the Wye that was at least as potent for him as what he said that he found in the Malvern Hills.

[pastoralguy]

I was lucky enough to play a lot of Elgar in my teens and early 20's and grew to love his music. I was abetted in this by hearing a young Nigel Kennedy play the violin concerto with the late Sir Alexander Gibson and the SNO in the 80's. Then I bought his recording with Todd Handley and played it to distraction. Although this piece was beyond my capabilities, I did learn and perform the violin sonata and won the chamber music prize at college. The (very) small sum of money awarded enabled me to travel to Worcester to visit Elgar's birthplace and do a number of Elgar things!

I was lucky enough to meet Elgar's godson, Wulstan Atkins, and was able to ask him about the man himself. Mr, Atkins told me that had it not been for Alice, Elgar would probably have given up and it's thanks to her dogged determination that we have this music today. For my 40th birthday, my folks gave me a letter written by Elgar to Ernest Newman which was part of a collection owned by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf who had inherited it from her late husband, Walter Legge! Every now and again I take it out and marvel that the hand that wrote that letter also wrote all that wonderful music.

[Once Was 4]

[QUOTE=pastoralguy;605444]I was lucky enough to play a lot of Elgar in my teens and early 20's and grew to love his music. I was abetted in this by hearing a young Nigel Kennedy play the violin concerto with the late Sir Alexander Gibson and the SNO in the 80's. Then I bought his recording with Todd Handley and played it to distraction. Although this piece was beyond my capabilities, I did learn and perform the violin sonata and won the chamber music prize at college. The (very) small sum of money awarded enabled me to travel to Worcester to visit Elgar's birthplace and do a number of Elgar things!



I was a pupil at Salts Grammar School, Shipley, between 1959 and 1966. Up to 1963 this school was housed in a ‘split site’ campus – the school which Sir Titus Salt founded having outgrown the facilities which he provided. Large assemblies, school dramatic productions, etc., were held in the Victoria Hall, Saltaire. Here we were treated to regular visits by the West Riding Orchestra – an ensemble of about 35 players employed by the West Riding of Yorkshire Education Committee to tour schools and give educational concerts. I cannot say that this orchestra introduced me to ‘good’ music, which was more to do with influence at home, but it certainly introduced me to Elgar. One concert, conducted by the orchestra’s joint conductor – composer and horn player Wilfred Heaton (the other was the composer and trumpet player Arthur Butterworth), included music that still greatly appeals to me – a movement from a Haydn Symphony, some of Grieg’s Peer Gynt music and, best of all, Enigma Variation No. IX, Nimrod. The very next Saturday my pocket money went on a Philips 45 rpm record of Nimrod and EDU, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham. I still have that record. Few of those WRO players are still alive but I worked with several at the start of my professional career in the early 1970s and always liked to tell them what they had done for me back then in Saltaire.

I went to the Northern School of Music, Manchester, in September 1966 and my first concert in a famous concert hall took place the following April – 4th horn in Elgar’s The Apostles, conducted by Maurice Handford at the Free Trade Hall. This had so many elements that made it exciting for the student orchestral players – working in the home of the Hallé Orchestra, treading the same stage where Sir John Barbirolli performed the previous week and so on. But for me, the main memory is my first performance in a big Elgar choral work. Perhaps, unusually then, my first such experience was not with The Dream of Gerontius.

It was The Dream that provided me with another big moment. By this stage I was a seasoned professional with well over 20 years service at Opera North, preceded by the best part of 10 years free-lancing with many orchestras. A South African choir was performing The Dream of Gerontius in Worcester Cathedral. They needed an orchestra that could play it well with minimal rehearsal: the Opera North orchestra was available that night and was booked. By this stage I had played the work many times – several of them with Dr Donald Hunt, who was to conduct that night. And, from my seat as 4th horn, I was facing the spot where Sir Edward used to stand whilst listening to performances of his music. Need I say more? Unlike most of my colleagues, I did not hit the motorway back to Yorkshire after the concert but stayed the night and, the following morning, made my second visit to the Elgar Birthplace – joining the Elgar Society at the same time

[BBMmk2]

There's one event in my life I wont forget too easily, that was being conducted by Sir Charles Groves, playing Elgar's Severn Suite. How this amazing man, brought together in just one rehearsal this work for concert performance that evening.a truly remarkable experience for me as I was only around 20 years old at the time.

[EdgeleyRob]

The Violin Concerto did it for me,played the Hugh Bean RLPO Groves LP to death way back when
The 2nd Symphony is for me his greatest work.
The scherzo ( I know EE didn't call it that) from the 1st Symphony is something you might hear down by the river he said.
I swear I heard the opening bars and the 2nd subject blowing through the grass and trees in the Herefordshire countryside many years ago.

[ahinton]

The Violin Concerto did it for me,played the Hugh Bean RLPO Groves LP to death way back when
The 2nd Symphony is for me his greatest work.
The scherzo ( I know EE didn't call it that) from the 1st Symphony is something you might hear down by the river he said.
I swear I heard the opening bars and the 2nd subject blowing through the grass and trees in the Herefordshire countryside many years ago.

I don't doubt that for a moment...

[BBMmk2]

I hope to play those recordings soon ER. thank you. Might have an Elgar Fest one day!

[antongould]

Happy birthday EE ..... just had a walk with the Enigma Variations and, of course, the sun came out ......

[cloughie]

Happy birthday EE ..... just had a walk with the Enigma Variations and, of course, the sun came out ......

Did your Nim Rod give you support? More seriously on Elgar I think the bridge from 2nd to 3rd movts of Sym 1 is wonderful, and in addition to the Symphonies, Falstaff and his big overtures, suites and VC I also like his shorter pieces such as Dream Children, Chansons de Nuit et Matin, Salut d'Amour and the Beau Brummel Minuet. I always feel that Introduction and Allegro for Strings should always as the Prelude to the Serenade for Strings, probably because they were always juxtaposed on the two versions I first knew them by - NSOL/Collins and SL/Barbirolli, the latter having a bit of Singalong a Sir John!

[Barbirollians]

Borrowing my grandparents recording of the Enigma Variations conducted by Sargent with the VW Tallis Fantasia as the coupling was my introduction to Elgar . I don't recall much about the performance but it led me to buy what was then the expensive Boult LSO recording at full price . I wore that record out so I got my money's worth and as much as I like Mackerras and Barbirolli in the work nothing will dislodge that performance from my heart .

Borrowing the du Pre and Baker classic from the library in the sixth form and buying the Menuhin/Boult recording of the Violin Concerto cemented Elgar in my heart and then along came the Barbirolli recording of Elgar 1 on an EMI Eminence LP. Elgar remains together with Beethoven' Mozart ,Mahler and Schubert one of the five composers whose music is closest to my heart .

[BBMmk2]

When Dr Robert Childs was MD of that famous Welsh band, The Cory Band, he did a brilliant transcription of The Organ Sonata. Well worth hearing this version.

[pastoralguy]

Every time I see the classic du Pre/Baker cd of the 'cello concerto in a charity shop I snap it up. I then give it away to anyone who expresses an interest in Elgar, classical music or great music making.

I must have given away about 20 odd copies over the years.