The composer
Thanks not least to his own letters and his wife Alice’s diaries, Elgar’s life was as closely documented as any, and yet as a character he remains strangely elusive. For someone apparently so rooted in a sense of place, he moved around a lot, living for periods in London (twice), Malvern, Herefordshire and eventually Sussex, and his popular characterisation as the quintessential Englishman belies a man with a very pan-European outlook. His music, meanwhile, ranges in emotion from the fond depictions of close friends in the Enigma Variations of 1899 to the darker, despondent world of the post-war Cello Concerto.
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The work
By the end of the 19th century, Elgar had made an indelible mark on the British music scene, primarily with his ground-breaking , the first four of his Marches, the Introduction and Allegro for Strings, the Overture and,. But he knew that, to consolidate his international status, what he needed most was a symphony. And that proved a daunting task.
