Violin Concerto, Op.61 (Elgar, Edward) - IMSLP: Free Sheet.
Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85. As it turned out, this was the last major work Elgar wrote. Alice Elgar was at her husband’s side at the first performance, in October 1919. But her health was not good, and when she died the following April, part of Elgar’s creative spark died with her.Edward Elgar's Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 61, is one of his longest orchestral compositions, and the last of his works to gain immediate popular success. The concerto was composed for the violinist Fritz Kreisler, who gave the premiere in London in 1910, with the composer conducting.Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85, concerto for cello and orchestra by English composer Sir Edward Elgar, first performed in London in October of 1919. It is a sombre work, reflecting the sorrows faced by the composer’s native land in the closing months of World War I. Within Elgar’s body of work.
Elgar’s Violin Concerto has a certain mystique about it independent of the knee-jerk obeisance it has received in the British press. It probably is the longest and most difficult of all Romantic violin concertos, requiring not just great technical facility but great concentration from the soloist and a real partnership of equals with the orchestra.The work is long for a violin concerto and expansive in mood but nevertheless compelling and not overblown. It contains none of the pomposity and swagger found in many of Elgar's works which some commentators find disturbing and rather distasteful. The work is firmly established in the classical repertoire although not performed frequently.
Anyone who heard Ida Haendel play Elgar’s Violin Concerto around the time of her recording it with Sir Adrian Boult conducting in Abbey Road sessions spread out between April 1977 and January 1978 would have been surprised at the epic, 55-minute, account that resulted, and which first appeared on an EMI LP.
