Andrew Joyce and NZSO Photo: Screenshot NZSO/Latitude Creative
This concerto was one of the first pieces the English composer was able to write after experiencing the horrors of World War I, and it’s also one of his last major works.
There’s a theory that this music mourns the wartime death of a Kenneth Munro. Munro was the son of Helen Weaver, a young Worcester woman who was engaged to Elgar in the 1880s, an engagement broken off when she emigrated to New Zealand.
Edward Elgar, around 1900. Photo: Public Domain
There’s no way of proving that this was the specific inspiration, but the brutal and senseless death of young men at war was undoubtedly an influence on this music.
Death was on his doorstep while he wrote it too. He rented a small cottage in Sussex, and there as he worked, he watched his wife “grow mysteriously smaller and more fragile”. It turned out to be their last summer together.
Some hear this influence in the music and call the last movement of the concerto “a dance of death”.
Two early recordings were made of this Concerto utilising the rudimentary techniques of the time; but it took the landmark EMI release in 1965 by the 20-year-old cellist Jacqueline du Pré with Sir John Barbirolli and the London Symphony Orchestra, to propel the Concerto to the exalted position it enjoys today.
This concerto is now one of the best-loved and most frequently performed concertos in the repertoire.
Recorded 29 August 2020, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Darryl Stack
