Symphony No. 2 in E‑Flat Major

Elgar completed his Symphony No. 2 in 1911. It turned out to be a very different work from the richly affirmative Symphony No. 1 (1908); the audience members at the new Symphony’s first performance, conducted by the composer, were bemused at the music’s mood swings between whimsical melancholy and wild freneticism. The dedication of Symphony No. 2 “to the Memory of His late Majesty King Edward VII” was only part of what lay behind the work’s inspiration. At the foot of the first page of the manuscript, Elgar wrote out a line from a poem by Shelley: “Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight!” The first of the four movements opens with a broadly swinging theme, described by Elgar as “tremendous in energy”; but in the central development section, a mood of haunted unease dominates, and a new theme appears, described by Elgar as the “ghost” motif. The second movement is a slow funeral march, magnificently sustained. The third is a high-speed scherzo, mercurial and manic, with a central Trio section in which the first movement’s “ghost” motive has now mutated into an episode of nightmarish violence. (Elgar described it as “the pounding in one’s head due to a fever”.) The mood calms again in the broadly paced finale; this eventually arrives at a slower restatement of the first movement’s opening theme, which now leads toward the symphony’s serene conclusion.