Description
Seductive and dangerous, the sea is a symbol for freedom and oblivion in Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Elgar’s music perfectly evokes the sea’s swells, storms and beauties in five masterly songs. Elgar’s 1892 Serenade was a gift to his wife on their third wedding anniversary, and it remained one of his favourite works. A brilliant showcase for the Sydney Symphony strings, the Serenade ‘proclaimed Elgar’s genius at a time when no one wanted to listen’.
A contemporary critic described the last pages of Elgar’s Second Symphony as ‘a winding and broken river that at last gathers all its waters together and rolls into the sea’. Indeed, the symphony is a journey in search of peace, happiness and resolution: Elgar headed the score with a quotation by Shelley: ‘Rarely, rarely comest thou, The Spirit of Delight.’ The spirit – ‘love and art’ – resides at the end of a dark and twisted path. Elgar leads us through a disturbing landscape, haunted by ghostly themes, before bursting into tranquil sunlight, in some of the most confessional music he ever composed.
Elgar
Sea Pictures
Serenade for strings
Symphony No.2