Elgar’s distractions

In a radio interview in 1937, Edward Elgar’s violinist friend William H. Reed described Elgar’s “distractions” while composing the violin concerto:

I can never play the last movement without seeing the River Wye flowing past the meadow at Hereford where Sir Edward and I used to practise throwing a boomerang in our “off-time” between working out these themes in the Finale [of the Violin Concerto]. It has been said that all Elgar’s music owes a good deal to the inspiration of the countryside which he loved so well. He loved his rivers too, the Severn in particular. One could almost label the moments in the Violin Concerto the Severn, the Thames and the Wye; for they seem to flow through all his music.

Jeremy Pound, “First Violin”, BBC Music Magazine, October 2010, p. 36.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

Bernstein’s television appearances
Bernstein is intent on demonstrating that the inevitable doesn’t just happen. It comes from intense work. To show this, he restores a handful of Beethoven’s discarded sketches to the score so that we can hear how the Fifth would have sounded if Beethoven had retained his first (or second or 10th) thought. Some discarded passages […]
Word of mouth encore
Leopold Stokowski gave the Philadelphia premiere of Ravel’s Bolero as an “encore” at a Friday afternoon concert. The newspaper critics had all left the hall, and so once again word of mouth had to prove its effacy, for at the Saturday night concert, after the last number, the audience applauded with unusual fervour and would […]
Inner-most feelings can be expressed in music
Taneyev was critical of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. Tchaikovsky’s response ended with: “I can see you laughing as you read all of this, you sceptic and mocking-bird.  In spite of your great love of music it seems you still can’t believe that a man can express his inmost feelings in his compositions.  You just wait!” Cited […]
In Memory of Those in Paradise
Title: In Memory of  Those in Paradise   Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:
The art of pedalling
The one bee in my bonnet is over-pedalling, and I give my students a hard time about that. It’s the lack of being able to play a true legato with the fingers.  People rely on the pedal for that, and the pedal is not there for that.  The pedal is for putting the gloss on.  […]
Transforming Bach’s Cantatas into an opera
Theatre director Herbert Wernicke has taken six of Bach’s Cantatas dealing with the frailty of the human condition and presented them in a staging of mundane human activities.  Albrecht Puhlmann, the general director of Stuttgart Opera, states that “From the woman with the baby to the coffin being carried out, life and death is being […]
The inexpressible depth of music
The inexpressible depth of all music, by virtue of which it floats past us as a paradise quite familiar and yet eternally remote, and is so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from […]
A little ahead … or a little behind
Samuel Sebastian Wesley received great reviews for his conding at Gloucester’s annual Three Choir Festivals in 1865. An critic in The Musical Times wrote in the October issue: We have said nothing of the orchestra during these performances, for in truth the perfect manner in which the whole of the instrumental portions of the works […]
An insight into the “Happy Birthday” tune
“Happy Birthday to You” is not an accidental success. It is not a traditional song nor did it appear ex nihilo. It originated with the Hill sisters, Patty and Mildred, and was first sung in a kindergarten classroom in Louisville, Kentucky in the late 19th century, back when kindergarten was a social experiment. Patty Smith […]
Beethoven’s prank
Beethoven was a musician for the Electoral court and chapel in Bonn. Franz Wegeler, a friend of of Beethoven’s, recounted an incident where the young Beethoven was to accompany a singer, Ferdinand Heller, in a church service. Heller prided himself on being able to sing in tune, no matter how complicated the accompaniment. Beethoven asked Heller if he […]