Featured Selection: Sir Edward Elgar--Overtures

Froissart (1890) was something of a landmark in Elgar's burgeoning career. The only Elgarian orchestral piece that had won any notice up to that time was the transcription of a treacly piano piece Salut d'amour (Love's greeting) which won him a commission from the prestigious Three Choirs Festival to do a work for the orchestral concert at Worcester that year. His inspiration came from Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality--from a passage in which one of the characters praises Froissart's "historical romances."

Jean Froissart (ca. 1333-1400/01) wrote chronicles which were highly evocative of chivalric life in were the France of the Hundred Years War. For Elgar's purposes, the name of Froissart is merely a key to the pomp and nobility he meant to express more abstractly. Much to his surprise, public and critics alike .admired it, finding in its composer a master of the great modern orchestra equal to any in Europe. Elgar, in fact, liked it himself: "What jolly healthy stuff it is," he said later.

The title of Cockaigne is punning. Cockaigne was the French Fool's Paradise or Schlarajfenland where the living is easy and roast hens fall from the sky. But Elgar is depicting London, the land of the Cockneys (a word that originally indicated either misshapen or effeminate men). This overture, the work of a composer by now widely recognaed, was immediately taken up by important conductors all over the world. Elgar describes it as "honest, healthy humorous, and strong, but not vulgar."

In the winter of 1904 the Elgars vacationed at Alassio on the Italian Riviera, between Nice and Genoa, and Edward lost his heart to Italy. In the South was an impressionistic record of that experience. The transcription of the overture to Handel's Second Chandos Anthem was a work of Elgar's rather barren late years. Scored for huge orchestra, it will send the authentic-performance crowd into paroxysms of rage--and delight a good many others.

Froissart (1890) was something of a landmark in Elgar's burgeoning career. The only Elgarian orchestral piece that had won any notice up to that time was the transcription of a treacly piano piece Salut d'amour (Love's greeting) which won him a commission from the prestigious Three Choirs Festival to do a work for the orchestral concert at Worcester that year. His inspiration came from Walter Scott's novel Old Mortality--from a passage in which one of the characters praises Froissart's "historical romances."

Jean Froissart (ca. 1333-1400/01) wrote chronicles which were highly evocative of chivalric life in were the France of the Hundred Years War. For Elgar's purposes, the name of Froissart is merely a key to the pomp and nobility he meant to express more abstractly. Much to his surprise, public and critics alike .admired it, finding in its composer a master of the great modern orchestra equal to any in Europe. Elgar, in fact, liked it himself: "What jolly healthy stuff it is," he said later.

The title of Cockaigne is punning. Cockaigne was the French Fool's Paradise or Schlarajfenland where the living is easy and roast hens fall from the sky. But Elgar is depicting London, the land of the Cockneys (a word that originally indicated either misshapen or effeminate men). This overture, the work of a composer by now widely recognaed, was immediately taken up by important conductors all over the world. Elgar describes it as "honest, healthy humorous, and strong, but not vulgar."

In the winter of 1904 the Elgars vacationed at Alassio on the Italian Riviera, between Nice and Genoa, and Edward lost his heart to Italy. In the South was an impressionistic record of that experience. The transcription of the overture to Handel's Second Chandos Anthem was a work of Elgar's rather barren late years. Scored for huge orchestra, it will send the authentic-performance crowd into paroxysms of rage--and delight a good many others.