Alice McVeigh introduced the work by speaking about her late, great father, finishing with these words from Walt Whitman:
“Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
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She is releasing this performance on the day her husband Simon’s latest book, MUSIC IN EDWARDIAN LONDON, is published worldwide (Boydell and Brewer). There is quite a lot about Elgar in it!
ALICE’S PROGRAMME NOTE ON THE ELGAR CONCERTO:
Whether appalled, infuriated or simply disillusioned, Elgar hardly composed while WWI endured. But from August 1918 he poured his feelings into four stunning works, including the cello concerto. It has been considered a lament for the lost, pre-war world, and also as an elegy for the many friends he lost, but Elgar himself was never explicit about what inspired it.
After an opening statement from the cellist – heard thrice, in three very different moods – the spare, modal first theme opens in the violas. (It was a favourite of Elgar’s. He whistled it to the LSO leader, Billy Reed, on his deathbed, saying, ‘Billy, if ever you’re walking on the Malvern Hills and hear that, don’t worry. It’s only me.’) The opening movement – in fact, the entire work – is mercurial, restless – hardly the same mood for more than a few bars together, by turns wistful, mischievous, powerful, courageous, autumnal. As the first movement ends – like a death – there is a questioning, improvisatory link before the feathery-light, wisp-‘o-wisp scherzo. The orchestra leads, while the cellist fools around with spiccato.
Once the scherzo scampers offstage, however, we’re left with the deeply private Adagio. So achingly lovely is this movement that Elgar’s publisher, scenting commercial opportunity, begged him to compose an alternate ending, so that it could be published separately. Elgar tried – and failed. (As he wrote, ‘I fear I cannot think of another ending for the slow movement – it will do as it is…’)
Alice is a multi-award-winning novelist, most recently honoured in the UK 2024 Selfies at the London Book Fair. Her latest, PRIDE AND PERJURY, can be pre-ordered on Amazon.