Program Notes · Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra · 22 April 2026
Bronfman’s ‘Emperor’, and Elgar’s Enigma
v3 · updated 30 September 2026 · 17 sources
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v3 · 30 September 2026 · Further reading added
- Added three recommended books: Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces, Portrait of Elgar, Elgar: 'Enigma' Variations (Cambridge Music Handbook)
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v2 · 30 September 2026 · Sources added; house-style edit
- Added 14 sources
- Removed em dashes
- Concert details (date, conductor, soloist, programme) checked against the orchestra's page: unchanged
- Beethoven: 'he loathed Napoleon' softened to his likely dislike of the nickname given his disapproval of Napoleon's conquests; 'under bombardment' changed to 'besieged'
- Beethoven: 'could no longer appear as a concerto soloist' softened; Leipzig 1811 premiere and 1812 Vienna date added
- Beethoven: transition to the finale no longer credits the semitone drop to the bassoons
- Koide: BBC Radio 3 commission and Japanese world premiere specified
- Elgar: composition dated to October 1898; the Variation VIII laugh attributed correctly (was a conflated 'hesitant' lady's laugh); hidden-theme sentence aligned with Elgar's 'through and over' wording
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v1 · 22 June 2026 · First published
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 (‘Emperor’)40 min
About the Work
Beethoven’s fifth and last piano concerto, composed in 1809 in a Vienna besieged by Napoleon’s army, is the grandest and most heroic of them all. The nickname ‘Emperor’ was not Beethoven’s: it was attached later in English-speaking countries, and given his disapproval of Napoleon’s conquests he would probably have disliked it. Still, it captures the work’s imperial scale and bearing. At around forty minutes it dwarfs his earlier concertos, and it rethinks the very opening of the form: instead of the orchestra setting out first, three massive chords are each answered immediately by a cascade of free, improvisatory flourishes from the soloist, as if the pianist seizes the music before the formalities can begin.
By 1809 Beethoven’s deafness had made playing in public increasingly difficult, and for the first time he did not premiere one of his own piano concertos himself: the first performance was given in Leipzig in 1811, and the Vienna premiere in 1812 fell to his pupil Carl Czerny. He also broke with convention by writing out the first-movement cadenza in full, instructing the pianist not to improvise one, a sign of how completely he now controlled the architecture. Dedicated to his patron and pupil the Archduke Rudolph, it is the magnificent capstone of his concerto writing: heroic, expansive and serenely confident.
What to Listen For
The opening is unmistakable: three grand orchestral chords, each crowned by a sweeping solo flourish, a breathtaking gesture that frames the whole concerto. When the orchestra settles into the main theme, listen for its martial, dotted rhythms and forward stride.
The slow movement (Adagio un poco mosso) is one of Beethoven’s most rapt: a hushed, hymn-like melody in the remote key of B major, the muted strings prayerful, the piano entering with music of extraordinary tenderness. Then comes the magical hinge. As the slow movement dies away, the harmony slips down a semitone, the piano quietly tries out a fragment of a new tune, hesitates, and bursts into the exuberant Rondo finale without a break, on a dancing, off-beat theme. Listen, near the very end, for the famous moment where the music winds down to almost nothing over a soft drum-roll before the final leap to life.
Noriko Koide (1982–)
Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain12 min
About the Work
Receiving its Dutch premiere tonight, Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain is a recent orchestral work (2022) by the Japanese composer Noriko Koide, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and first performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in Japan. Its exquisite, tactile title is a clue to its character: this is music of fine textures and delicate threads, concerned above all with the quality and colour of sound itself. Koide is steeped both in the refined aesthetics of contemporary Japanese music (she studied with Toshio Hosokawa) and in the shimmering, interlocking sonorities of the Javanese gamelan, and both worlds can be felt in her orchestral writing.
The piece, lasting around twelve minutes, unfolds with great patience. As one description puts it, ‘a dynamic slowly develops from recumbent sounds’, with Koide using big musical gestures sparingly so that small changes register with great intensity. Placed between the grandeur of Beethoven and the warmth of Elgar, it offers a completely different listening experience: an invitation to attend closely to the surface and texture of orchestral sound, to the way music can be woven from the most gossamer-fine materials.
What to Listen For
Approach this one with patient, open ears: rather than tunes and dramatic argument, listen for texture, colour and the slow transformation of sound. Koide builds from quiet, ‘recumbent’ sonorities, and the rewards lie in noticing how delicately the orchestral fabric is woven: threads of sound emerging, overlapping and dissolving, like silk and fine rain.
Listen for the influence of the gamelan in the shimmering, finely layered textures, and for Koide’s restraint: because she uses large gestures so sparingly, every swell, every change of colour, every emergence of a clearer line carries real weight. Let the music slow your listening down. This is a piece to be absorbed as an evolving soundscape, fragile and detailed, a contemporary voice freshening the ear between two beloved classics.
Edward Elgar (1857–1934)
Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’, Op. 3630 min
About the Work
The Enigma Variations is the work that made Elgar famous and announced the arrival of a great English composer. The story of its genesis is charming: one evening in October 1898, relaxing at the piano, Elgar idly improvised a tune and then began playing it in styles that mimicked the personalities of various friends, amusing his wife. From that parlour game grew a full orchestral masterpiece: a theme followed by fourteen variations, each a musical ‘portrait’ of someone in his circle, identified in the score only by initials or nicknames. He dedicated it ‘to my friends pictured within.’
The variations range from the affectionate to the witty to the profound. The most famous by far is the ninth, ‘Nimrod’, a portrait of Elgar’s friend and editor August Jaeger (Jäger means ‘hunter’ in German; Nimrod was the mighty hunter of the Bible). This slow, swelling Adagio has become one of the most beloved pieces in all British music, played at moments of national mourning and remembrance. But the whole set is a marvel of orchestration and warmth. Then there is the ‘enigma’ itself: Elgar hinted that, besides the theme we hear, a larger, unheard theme ‘goes’ through the whole work but is never played, a puzzle he refused to explain and which has teased listeners ever since. The premiere, under Hans Richter in London in 1899, was a triumph that launched Elgar’s international career.
What to Listen For
First, fix the theme in your ear: a wistful, slightly halting melody in the strings, heard at the very start. Then enjoy the gallery of friends. Each variation has its own character, so listen for the contrasts: tender and lyrical in some, brilliant and boisterous in others. Several are vivid little character sketches, like the one depicting a friend’s bulldog tumbling down a riverbank and paddling about (Variation XI), or the graceful portrait of a lady that includes ‘a little suggestion of a characteristic laugh’ (Variation VIII).
The emotional summit is ‘Nimrod’ (Variation IX): listen for how it begins almost in a whisper and grows, with infinite patience, into a great surging climax of nobility and warmth: Elgar’s tribute to a cherished friendship, and music of overwhelming feeling. The finale is a grand self-portrait (Elgar himself, ‘E.D.U.’), gathering up earlier themes and building, with organ and full orchestra, to a triumphant close. And as you listen, you might ponder the enigma: somewhere, Elgar claimed, another and larger theme runs ‘through and over’ the whole set, though no one has ever conclusively found it.
Tonight's Artists
Yefim Bronfmanpiano
The ‘Emperor’ Concerto is the most heroic and large-scale of Beethoven’s piano concertos, demanding both grandeur and finesse: power for its imperial outer movements and a singing, hushed tenderness for its great slow movement. Yefim Bronfman, celebrated for the combination of titanic technique and deep musicianship, is a natural for it: a pianist who can command the work’s vast architecture while bringing warmth and poetry to its quiet heart.
Yefim Bronfman, born in Tashkent in 1958 into a family of musicians, is one of the most commanding pianists of our time. He emigrated to Israel as a teenager and made his international debut under Zubin Mehta, going on to a major career based in the United States. Renowned for the power, depth and effortless virtuosity of his playing, combined with great musical intelligence and warmth, he is a favourite partner of the world’s leading orchestras and conductors. A Grammy Award winner (for the Bartók concertos with Esa-Pekka Salonen), he commands a vast repertoire, and his combination of titanic technique and natural musicianship makes him an ideal interpreter of the grandest concertos, including Beethoven’s ‘Emperor.’
Further reading
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Accessible Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces
Laura Tunbridge, Penguin Books 2020
A fresh, short life of Beethoven told through nine works, including the ‘Emperor’ Concerto.
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Accessible Portrait of Elgar
Michael Kennedy, Oxford University Press 1987
A classic life of Elgar that tells how the Enigma Variations and their portraits of his friends made his name.
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Deeper Elgar: Enigma Variations
Julian Rushton, Cambridge University Press 1999
A Cambridge Music Handbook on the Enigma Variations alone, covering its sketches, the friends pictured and the puzzle of the theme.