For 200 years following Henry Purcell’s death in 1695, the only significant music created in England was the work of foreigners, including Handel, J.C. Bach, and Haydn. The man who broke England’s dry spell was an unlikely candidate—the son of a piano tuner, Catholic in a Protestant country, and untrained in music except for some violin lessons as a teenager. Edward Elgar gained international recognition with his intriguing “Enigma Variations” in 1899, and he helped forge a distinctly British sound in the waning years of the Romantic era.
When a shellshocked Europe emerged from World War I with a distinct bitterness toward the grandiosity and sentimentality of the “Before Times,” many older composers found themselves marginalized. Elgar, for his part, rose to the challenge with four substantial compositions that met the modern moment using historical tools. Three looked back to the chamber music tradition of Brahms and Schumann: the Violin Sonata in E minor, the String Quartet in E minor, and the Piano Quintet in A minor. The final product of this late surge was the Cello Concerto in E minor, which Elgar conducted himself in October 1919 with the cellist Felix Salmond and the London Symphony Orchestra. Elgar’s wife died several months later, and the heartbroken composer fell silent for his remaining 14 years, producing no more major pieces.
The mood of the Cello Concerto matches the image of Elgar in his autumnal years: nostalgic, dignified, and uncompromising. The cello drops into a serious theme from the first downbeat, starting with three wide chords. The body of the movement pulses with a restrained tempo, providing a platform for expressive melodies and tasteful virtuosity that never overshadows the musical narrative.
Plucked versions of the same three chords provide the link to the second movement. After another free-flowing introduction, the material gathers itself into a light-stepping scherzo full of chattering bow strokes. The Adagio movement responds with endless melodic lines that whisper over a reduced orchestra and inch ever forward, the cello resting for only one measure. The final phrase lands on an unresolved harmony, and the orchestra provides the answer in the form of an agitated transition back to the home key. A free-form introduction echoes the mood of the opening movement, and even the finale’s most spirited music cannot stave off the concerto’s urge to turn inward, with memories lingering of the three mysterious chords heard in earlier movements.
Solo cello; piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, strings
