Programme Notes · London Symphony Orchestra · 11 June 2026
Pappano: Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mahler’s Fifth
v3 · updated 30 September 2026 · 11 sources
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v3 · 30 September 2026 · Further reading added
- Added three recommended books: Carr's Mahler, Portrait of Elgar, Elgar: Enigma Variations
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v2 · 30 September 2026 · Sources added; house-style edit
- Added 8 sources
- Removed em dashes
- Mahler 5 notes: concert no longer described as the LSO's season-end concert (not supported; the season continued into July)
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v1 · 22 June 2026 · First published
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’, Op. 3630 min
About the Work
Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ Variations is the work that made him famous overnight and remains one of the best-loved of all English orchestral works: a set of fourteen variations on an original theme, each a musical portrait of a friend or family member. Completed in 1899, it grew out of a charming domestic moment: improvising at the piano one evening, Elgar played a tune and then began varying it in the manner of various friends, amusing his wife by sketching their personalities in music. From that game came this affectionate, brilliantly orchestrated gallery of portraits of ‘my friends pictured within,’ each headed with initials or a nickname. The result is both deeply personal and universally appealing, full of warmth, humour, tenderness and nobility, and it announced a major new symphonic voice in British music.
The ‘enigma’ of the title has two layers. The first is simply that each variation is a coded portrait of a real person (their identities are now well known). The second is a genuine, unsolved puzzle: Elgar hinted that the theme itself is a counterpoint to another, famous melody that is never actually heard, a ‘hidden tune’ running ‘through and over the whole set.’ He never revealed what it was, and musicians have argued about it ever since (suggestions range from ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to ‘Rule, Britannia’). The mystery only adds to the work’s charm. It makes a warm, characterful first half, and on this occasion carries extra poignancy, the concert being dedicated to the memory of the LSO’s Conductor Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas.
What to Listen For
Listen first to the ‘Enigma’ theme itself: a wistful, slightly melancholy melody in the strings, with a distinctive falling-and-rising shape, which then undergoes its fourteen transformations. Each variation has its own character; listen for how Elgar conjures a different personality in each.
A few highlights to listen for: the very first variation (‘C.A.E.’), a tender portrait of Elgar’s wife Alice; the boisterous, leaping ‘Troyte’ (a friend’s hopeless attempts at the piano); the gentle, watery ‘Dorabella’ with its fluttering woodwinds (depicting a young woman’s slight stammer, affectionately); and above all the great central variation, ‘Nimrod’: a profound, slowly building hymn of friendship (portraying Elgar’s friend A. J. Jaeger), one of the most moving pieces in all music, often played at memorials and ceremonies. Listen for the way it grows from hushed strings to a glorious, noble climax. The finale (‘E.D.U.’, Elgar’s own self-portrait) gathers up earlier themes and builds, with organ and full orchestra, to a triumphant, life-affirming close. Throughout, savour Elgar’s masterly orchestration and his gift for melody, warmth and nobility.
Gustav Mahler (1860–1911)
Symphony No. 570 min
About the Work
Mahler’s Fifth Symphony is one of his greatest and most popular, a vast, five-movement journey from the depths of a funeral march to a blaze of triumphant joy. Composed in 1901–02, it marks a new phase in his work: he set aside the songs, voices and explicit programmes of his earlier ‘Wunderhorn’ symphonies and wrote a purely orchestral symphony of immense scale and ambition, relying on the orchestra alone to carry an overwhelming emotional and spiritual argument. It was also composed during the happiest period of his life (he met and married the beautiful Alma Schindler while working on it), and the symphony’s progress from darkness to radiant light reflects that turn toward love and hope.
The symphony is built in three large parts spanning five movements, tracing an arc from tragedy to exultation. At its heart, famously, lies the Adagietto, a hushed, achingly beautiful slow movement for strings and harp alone, widely believed to be a wordless love-letter to Alma, and made universally famous by Visconti’s film Death in Venice. From the shattering trumpet fanfare and funeral march of the opening to the exuberant, life-affirming counterpoint of the finale, it is a work of tremendous emotional range and orchestral brilliance: a fitting, and on this occasion deeply moving, conclusion to a concert dedicated to the memory of Michael Tilson Thomas, a great Mahlerian.
What to Listen For
The symphony falls into three parts. Part One (movements 1–2): listen for the very opening: a solo trumpet sounding a fateful fanfare (echoing Beethoven’s Fifth) that launches a grim funeral march, full of grief and shattering outbursts. The second movement is stormy and turbulent, wrestling with the first’s despair, but listen for the blazing brass chorale that flares up like a vision of triumph, only to collapse, the victory not yet won.
Part Two is the gigantic central Scherzo, the symphony’s pivot from darkness toward light. Listen for the exuberant Ländler (Austrian country dance) rhythms, the prominent solo horn (a real concerto-like role), and the sheer life and energy bursting out. Part Three (movements 4–5): listen for the famous Adagietto, scored for strings and harp alone: slow, tender, intimate and heart-melting (Mahler’s love-song to Alma); let its hushed beauty envelop you. Then, without a break, the Finale bursts in, joyful, intricate and contrapuntal, full of bustling fugal energy and rustic good humour. Listen for how Mahler brings back the brass chorale from the second movement, now in full triumph, and drives the whole symphony to an exultant, life-affirming close: darkness conquered, joy attained.
Further reading
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Accessible Mahler: A Biography
Jonathan Carr, Overlook Press 1998
A readable biography of Mahler that sets the Fifth Symphony, with its famous Adagietto, in the years of his marriage to Alma.
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Accessible Portrait of Elgar
Michael Kennedy, Oxford University Press 1987
Michael Kennedy’s study of Elgar’s life and music, with an account of the Enigma Variations and the friends portrayed in them.
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Deeper Elgar: Enigma Variations
Julian Rushton, Cambridge University Press 1999
A handbook devoted to the Enigma Variations: their genesis, the friends behind each variation, and the music itself.