Elgar's Second

On today’s date in 1911, Edward Elgar conducted the first performance of his Second Symphony with the Queen’s Hall Orchestra.

Now, Elgar’s First Symphony had generated a lot of excitement when it debuted late in 1908, and Elgar’s big Violin Concerto, which Fritz Kreisler premiered in 1910, was greeted with equal enthusiasm

But the hall was not filled for the premiere of Elgar’s Second, and, after the performance, the audience seemed unmoved. Elgar turned to his concertmaster, W.H. Reed, and asked: “What’s the matter with them, Billy? They sit there like a lot of stuffed pigs!”

In his book The Symphony, musicologist Michael Steinberg speculates that a competing concert that same day featuring Kreisler and Pablo Casals performing the Brahms Double Concerto might have siphoned off some of the audience for the premiere, and perhaps the ambiguous and melancholy tone of the new work made the Queen’s Hall audience more reflective and thoughtful than enthusiastic.

Elgar dedicated his Secon