< World Premiere >
EDWARD ELGAR : Violin Concerto, Op. 61
Thursday 10 November, 1910 – Queen's Hall, London
London Symphony Orchestra, cond. Edward Elgar
Fritz Kreisler, Violin solo
“The violin was Elgar’s own instrument and his 'Violin Concerto' is almost like a personal confession: it was ‘too emotional’, Elgar admitted, adding that he loved it nonetheless. The Spanish inscription he wrote opposite the title-page – Aquí está encerrada el alma de . . . . . (‘Here is enshrined the soul of . . . . .’) – offers an Elgarian enigma, to which the most popular solution is that the soul belonged to Alice (five letters, corresponding to the five dots) Stuart-Wortley, a friend for whom Elgar invented the name ‘Windflower’ (a wood anemone, one of the first signs of spring), which he also attached to two of the gentler themes in the opening movement.
Elgar sketched a number of ideas in 1905 after reading a newspaper interview with Fritz Kreisler, in which the 30-year-old violinist said highly flattering things about Elgar’s music, and wished he would write something for violin. Elgar eventually got down to composing the concerto in earnest in 1909, and Kreisler gave the first performance at the Queen’s Hall in London on Monday 10 November, 1910, with Elgar himself conducting. Later on, Kreisler seems to have lost his initial enthusiasm for the work, made cuts, and resisted all attempts to persuade him to record it.
The solo part is one of the most exhausting in the repertoire – a veritable compendium of bravura violin techniques, in which Elgar, despite all his inside knowledge, sought the help of W. H. Reed, later to become leader of the London Symphony Orchestra. Reed and Elgar (at the piano) gave a run-through to a select group of listeners before the first performance proper. Kreisler also made small suggestions that were incorporated in the published score.
In his interview, Kreisler had ranked Elgar with Beethoven and Brahms. Elgar met the challenge, and his 'Violin Concerto' combines the singing quality of Beethoven’s with the symphonic drama of Brahms’s.”
— Adrian Jack