Composers E

The Serenade is Elgar’s first mature work, with a fluency and high-gloss finish that foreshadows the finest writing in his two symphonies, which would come some years later.  Its three short movements are possibly a reworking of Spring Song, Elegy and Finale, miniature string pieces from four years previously which are now lost.  After their 1888 premiere Elgar wrote: “I like ‘em – the first thing I ever did!”  In later life he often referred to the Serenade as his favourite work, and conducted it as one of his final gramophone recordings in the year before his death. It seems likely that the Serenade was a present to his wife Alice on their third wedding anniversary.

 

The work was not heard in London until 1905, when Elgar himself conducted it. The first movement is wistful, gentle and dusky in feel, (‘piacevole’ means ‘pleasingly’) and is based on two themes, the second more lyrical than the first, though the tripping 6/8 figure is rarely far away. The second movement features poignant and typically Elgarian rising and falling sevenths, a pre-echo perhaps of the famous Nimrod movement from the Enigma Variations. The finale reverts to a more playful slant on the mood of the first movement, but before long Elgar re-explores one of the first movement’s themes, as though there is unfinished business there – a touch which Finzi would also employ in his Clarinet Concerto.