Cello Concerto in E minor, Op.85

It is easy, with hindsight, to be sentimental about the music Elgar wrote at Brinkwells in 1918 and 1919 - the Violin Sonata, the String Quartet, the Piano Quintet, and the Cello Concerto. It can, on the other hand, be misleading in coming to an understanding of those works. He was by no means unhappy in his Sussex country cottage and, having enjoyed such productivity there, he could not have suspected when he was working on his Cello Concerto that it would be his last major score. It is true that, while there is more than a touch of nostalgia about the chamber pieces, all of which are in minor keys, there is a distinct sense of loss in the Cello Concerto. But that is surely a retrospective emotion - inspired by the tragedy of the Great War perhaps - rather than a prophecy of the death of the composer’s wife in 1920 and of the bereavement of his creative powers thereafter. Besides, whatever his true feelings, Elgar was too good a composer not to hold them in long-term balance.

The dramatic opening gesture on solo cello - a rising fourth and a simple melodic turn proclaimed fortissimo over multi-stopped E minor harmonies - determines the character and the material of much of the rest of the work. But is it an expression of despair or of defiance? The first subject of the Moderato - a gently lilting 9/8 variant of the cello’s opening statement introduced in no particular key by violas - is even more enigmatic in mood. The second subject, a hesitantly playful variant of the same theme, makes its entry in E minor on clarinets and is then coaxed by the soloist into a more confident E major version.

From here the first movement goes into reverse, by way of a recapitulation of the first subject to an echo of the opening statement - this time in plucked chords on solo cello alternating with rapidly bowed snatches of a new thematic idea which converts the rising fourth to a third. This is the transition to the second movement, a poetically fleeting Allegro molto, magically scored and embracing colourful memories in the old-fashioned heroic key of E flat major and ending not unhappily in G major.

Carefully preserved up this point, outward continuity is broken between the second and third movements. Not formally connected to the foregoing - unless it is by means of the rising third and fourth in the first bar - the Adagio is a spontaneous expression of an emotion which, in its B flat major tonality and its profound thoughtfulness, is too serious to be described as anything as ordinary as melancholy. Elgar himself leaves the question unanswered by ending the movement inconclusively on the dominant.

It is significant perhaps that he chooses to begin the last movement not in B flat major but in B flat minor, in which key the main theme of the Allegro ma non troppo is briefly anticipated on violins and cellos. He sees to it, however, that this theme is firmly associated with the first two movements: before it is presented in its definitive E minor form, the cellist interpolates a recitative-cadenza which is a clear echo of the solo statement at the opening of the work even though the rising fourth is again reduced to a third.

Taken up risoluto by the soloist as the tempo changes to Allegro ma non troppo, the main theme crackles with the old energy. There is a cheerfully capricious second subject and among the variants of the main theme - some of them presented by the orchestra against chains of arpeggios on the cello - there is one episode of positively Falstaffian rotundity. The first pause for reflection, on the other hand, plunges the soloist and then the orchestra back into the Adagio train of thought, which leads conclusively and meaningfully into a last declaration of the soloist’s multi-stopped statement from the opening of the work. As for the brief Allegro molto coda, is it intended to sweep such thoughts aside or is it just a formal gesture?

Gerald Larner©