Edward Elgar’s two symphonies have loomed like magnificent promontories over the British musical landscape since the moment of their first performances. To put another way, they each sprang from the head of Zeus like the goddess Athena, fully formed and armed! All the more amazing in the so-called the “Land öhne Musik”, which throughout the long drought since the death of Purcell was dominated by Mendelssohn oratorios, Anglican music by Parry and Stanford and Gilbert & Sullivan. 

While Elgar mulled over the theme for his First Symphony for some time (the subject was to be General Gordon, of Khartoum fame) he eventually abandoned the idea (thankfully!) The First Symphony was premiered in December 1908 under the baton of Hans Richter, one of Europe’s leading conductors and Elgar’s most devoted patron. What eventuated was a work of genius, miraculously crystallised with its myriad poetic visions, which fully occupies its own universe. 

No one knows whether Elgar had heard Mahler’s remark to Sibelius that a symphony should embrace the world, but he, consciously or otherwise, internalised it in this symphony with its grandeur, dignity, animation and, to use John Maynard...