Completed in 1919, the Cello Concerto was Edward Elgar’s last major work for orchestra. In spite of fleeting moments of idyllic release, it’s dominated by disillusionment, by a sense of suffering that at times cries out against life, yet more often speaks in quiet anguish.
Elgar had been ill, and he was deeply depressed by the Great War’s destruction of the world he had known. All of this he poured into a concerto for the cello — not such an unlikely instrument, considering its rich-toned yet brooding personality and its dark sounds.
The four moments unfold from one another as if forming a single, rhapsodic thought — which, in view of Elgar’s masterful use of his thematic material, they actually do.
After the almost funereal beginning of the first movement, the clarinets introduce a lyric second theme, which is treated in the graceful manner of a siciliana.
The second movement is prefaced by a pizzicato version of the cello’s opening recitative; the main body of this movement is a scherzo-like moto perpetuo.
A meditative adagio of great beauty reduces the orchestra to chamber size, and the cello sings through all but a single measure.
Here is Yo Yo Ma to play this music for you:
