Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major, Op. 55

Program notes

About the Work

Elgar’s First Symphony was one of the most eagerly awaited works in British musical history. By 1908 he was at the height of his fame, and it was widely known that he had been contemplating a symphony for over a decade; when it finally appeared, the anticipation was enormous. The premiere, given by the Hallé Orchestra under the great Hans Richter (the conductor who had led the first Ring cycle for Wagner) in Manchester on 3 December 1908, was a sensation. Rehearsing the London Symphony Orchestra for the London premiere a few days later, Richter reportedly called it ‘the greatest symphony of modern times, written by the greatest modern composer,’ and the public agreed: within little more than a year the symphony had received around a hundred performances across Britain, Europe and America, an almost unheard-of success for a new symphonic work.

Elgar dedicated it to Richter, and built the vast, four-movement structure around a single ‘motto’ theme, a broad, noble melody (he marked it nobilmente, a favourite Elgarian direction) heard at the very opening, which returns, transformed, across the whole symphony to bind it together and crown it at the end. The work is huge in scale and emotional range, moving from serene grandeur through a driving, restless scherzo to one of the most beautiful slow movements ever written by an Englishman, before a finale that battles its way to a blazing return of the opening nobility. It is Edwardian confidence and private vulnerability held in a single, magnificent span.

What to Listen For

Everything begins with the motto theme: listen, at the very opening, for a slow, grand, hymn-like melody over a quiet tread, noble and serene. Fix it in your memory, because Elgar will bring it back, transformed, throughout the symphony, and its triumphant return is the work’s ultimate goal. After this majestic introduction, the first movement proper grows restless and stormy, the calm of the motto repeatedly disturbed.

The second movement is a fierce, driving scherzo, full of nervous energy and brilliant orchestration; listen for how its hurtling march-like material gives way to a gentler, almost pastoral episode. Then, magically, that same fast music slows and transforms directly into the great Adagio third movement, one of the supreme slow movements in the repertoire, music of profound, songful tenderness that Richter compared to Beethoven. (Listen for how the scherzo’s notes literally become the Adagio’s melody, slowed almost beyond recognition.) The finale begins in shadow and uncertainty, gathering its forces, until at last the noble motto theme returns in full glory, sweeping the symphony to a radiant, affirmative close in A-flat.