Elgar's Second

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1911, Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Second Symphony with the Queen’s Hall Orchestra.

Now, Elgar’s First Symphony had generated a lot of excitement when it debuted late in 1908, and Elgar’s big Violin Concerto, which Fritz Kreisler premiered in 1910, was greeted with equal enthusiasm

But the hall was not filled for the premiere of Elgar’s Second, and, after the performance, the audience seemed unmoved. Elgar turned to his concertmaster, W.H. Reed, and asked: “What’s the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs!”

In his book The Symphony, musicologist Michael Steinberg speculates that a competing concert that same day featuring Kreisler and Pablo Casals performing the Brahms Double Concerto might have siphoned off some of the audience for the premiere, and perhaps the ambiguous and melancholy tone of the new work made the Queen’s Hall audience more reflective and thoughtful than enthusiastic.

Elgar dedicated his Second Symphony to the memory of King Edward VII, who had died the previous May. A year of official mourning was just ending, and perhaps that, too, contributed a sobering effect on those hearing the music for the first time.

In the decades that followed, British and international audiences have warmed considerably to Elgar’s Second, ultimate agreeing with Elgar’s own comment on its composition: “I have worked at fever heat and the thing is tremendous in energy.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934) Symphony No. 2 London Symphony; Sir Colin Davis, cond. LSO 18

On This Day

Births

• 1886 - French conductor and composer conductor Paul Paray, in Le Tréport;

• 1903 - Soviet-Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian (Gregorian date: June 6);

• 1936 - American composer Harold Budd, in Los Angeles;

• 1941 - American singer and songwriter Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman), in Duluth, Minn.;

Deaths

• 1968 - American composer Bernard Rogers, age 75, in Rochester, N.Y.;

• 1974 - American composer Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, age 75, in New York City;

• 1996 - American composer Jacob Druckman, age 67, in New Haven, Conn.;

Premieres

• 1803 - Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 9 ("Kreutzer Sonata"), in Vienna, with violinist George Bridgetower and Beethoven at the piano;

• 1810 - Beethoven: incidental music for Goethe's play "Egmont," in Vienna at the Hofburg Theater;

• 1833 - Marschner: opera "Hans Heiling," in Berlin at the Königliches Opernhaus;

• 1899 - Massenet: "Cendrillon," in Paris;

• 1906 - Delius: "Sea Drift" (to a text by Walt Whitman, in Essen, Germany;

• 1911 - Elgar: Symphony No. 2, at the London Festival with the Queen's Hall Orchestra conducted by the composer;

• 1918 - Bartók: opera "Bluebeard's Castle," at the Budapest Opera;

• 1939 - Elliott Carter: "Pocahontas" Ballet, at the Martin Beck Theater in New York City , with an orchestra conducted by Fritz Kitzinger; Following Carter's ballet, the New York premiere of Copland's ballet "Billy the Kid" was presented (Copland's ballet had been premiered in Chicago on October 16, 1938);

• 1948 - John Gay: "The Beggar's Opera" arranged by Benjamin Britten, in Cambridge;

• 1970 - Panufnik: "Universal Prayer," at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City, Leopold Stokowski conducting.