THE STORY BEHIND: Elgar's Cello Concerto

On October 15, Tania Miller and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present STERLING ELLIOTT with cellist Sterling Elliott.

THE STORY BEHIND: Elgar's Cello Concerto

Title: Cello Concerto, op.85, E minor
Composer: Edward Elgar  (1857-1934)
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: Last performed November 17, 2018 with Christopher Warren-Green conducting and soloist Colin Carr. In addition to a solo cello, this piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.

The Story:

No one who lived through World War I was the same after it ended. The world looked different, people had aged, and many prewar values now seemed irrelevant. Edward Elgar found himself in just such a state in 1919, the year in which he composed the Cello Concerto, his last major work. At that time, he and his wife lived in a cottage near Sussex. Biographer Michael Kennedy describes Elgar then: “He was an autumnal figure now, and his surroundings suited his frame of mind. He occupied himself chopping wood and making hoops for barrels and building bonfires.”

In the previous year, Elgar had composed three chamber works. Their restrained character and instrumentation no doubt had an influence on his approach to writing the Cello Concerto, so different from his Violin Concerto of ten years earlier. Donald Tovey writes that the cello work is “. . . a fairy tale, full, like all Elgar’s larger works, of meditative and intimate passages; full also of humor, which, in the second movement and finale, rises nearer to the surface than Elgar usually permits.”

In addition, the movement plan is different from anything else Elgar wrote. The first two movements connect (moderate — fast tempos) as do the last two (slow — fast tempos).

Building from a noble cello solo, the first movement’s slow introduction arrives at a solemn grandeur and then subsides to introduce the graceful, lilting main theme. Most of this movement of “autumn smoke and falling leaves” (Kennedy) is based on that melody. A brief cello solo furtively introduces the second movement’s main theme. The cello’s busy but very precise part is highlighted throughout.

The slow movement is concise in size, instrumentation, and musical material. Elgar masterfully builds an entire tragic nocturne on two phrases. A rhapsodic cello recitative (reminiscent of the concerto’s opening) forms a bridge to the highly spirited finale. The robust main theme contrasts with a second idea that to Tovey suggests “dignity at the mercy of a banana-skin.” Toward the end, reminiscences of themes from the third and first movements appear. The quietude of these sets up a last burst of the finale’s main theme, which tersely ends the concerto.

Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink © 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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