Moderato – Allegro
Adagio
Andante – Allegro

Elgar’s Piano Quintet is one of his last large-scale works, dating from the same period as the Violin Sonata and the Cello Concerto. In October 1918, Elgar wrote to the critic Ernest Newman, telling him that the first movement of his Piano Quintet was ready: ‘I want you to hear it. It is strange music I think, and I like it – but it’s ghostly stuff.’ The work was to be dedicated to Newman. The first private performance of the complete work took place on 7 March 1919 at Severn House, Elgar’s London home. George Bernard Shaw was there, and his reaction was enthusiastic: ‘The Quintet knocked me over … This was the finest thing of its kind since [Beethoven’s] Coriolan.’ Shaw is presumably referring here to the dark, uneasy opening which certainly recalls the mood of Beethoven’s overture.

As the introduction gives way to the main Allegro another influence is apparent: the Piano Quintet by Brahms. It is presumably the sweeping, passionate drive of the musical argument in this movement – punctuated by some dramatic references back to the introductory music – that led the English musicologist and Elgar biographer Percy Young to describe it in the most glowing terms, declaring that it was ‘in some ways Elgar’s finest movement’. The work’s central Adagio begins with a tranquil viola solo, supported by the other strings. This expansive movement is crowned by a passionate climax of almost orchestral grandeur, before subsiding back to the gentler, calmer mood of the opening. After a brief introduction that becomes increasingly agitated, the main theme of the finale is a noble arching theme marked ‘with dignity, song-like’. Much of the movement is restrained and reflective, but at the close Elgar drives home his musical ideas to a powerful and thrilling conclusion.

Nigel Simeone © 2011