Early Style Versus Late Style

Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a work of striking depth and intimacy, is a telling contrast to his splashier Violin Concerto, composed a decade earlier when he was at the peak of his popularity. The latter is quintessential Elgar—colorful, expansive, and full of virtuoso display—whereas the Cello Concerto is tightly organized and more equally balanced between soloist and orchestra. Emotionally, as well, it is a more attenuated work, and its initial audience, conditioned by early Elgar, was not prepared for his late manner. Composed in 1919 and premiered by the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra with Felix Salmond as soloist, it had the misfortune to appear on the same program as Scriabin’s spectacularly colorful The Poem of Ecstasy, which was better rehearsed and greatly preferred by the audience.

A Sunset View of Life

Elgar’s ebullient Romanticism and “pomp and circumstance” march music were dissipated by poor health and the tragedy of World War I, as his art turned increasingly inward toward a more intimate aesthetic. This late style recalls the final works of Brahms, which convey a sunset view of life. Elgar himself called the cello concerto “a man’s attitude to life.”

A Closer Listen

Throughout the concerto, Elgar exploits the capacity of the cello for deep, soulful sonorities. The work opens and closes with a mournful cello solo that can only be imagined on that instrument. An insistence on pensive overtures and postludes emphasizes the work’s melancholy.

The opening movement is overshadowed by a dirge-like melody which first appears in the introduction, then reappears climactically for full orchestra after a wistful woodwind theme. Similarly, the spry main theme of the finale is gradually sabotaged by a series of passionate, yearning modulations that lead to a return of the dark material that opens the concerto. Not surprisingly, the slow movement—a characteristically tender Elgar Adagio—is the spiritual center. Only in the delicate little scherzo in the second movement—once the music struggles out of the shadow of the movement’s somber introduction—does the work take on any real brightness, as the cello flits about in its upper register like a lone firefly in the twilight.

—Jack Sullivan
© 2022 Carnegie Hall

Scoring
Solo cello
2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo)
2 oboes
2 clarinets
2 bassoons
4 horns
2 trumpets
3 trombones
Tuba
Timpani
Strings

Performance Time
Approximately 30 minutes

Premiere
Composed in 1918–1919, Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85, received its US premiere at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 1922, with The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski.