RENCONTRE INÉDITES VIII
Both Glinka and Elgar are composers who are too often overlooked. Yet they were both pioneers in the musical development of their country. The great names of the younger generation, Randall Goosby, Anastasia Kobekina, Edgar Moreau, Alexander Malofeev among others, highlight them in the eighth episode of Rencontres Inédites.
Programme
Interval
EDWARD ELGAR (1857-1934)
Distribution
- Randall Goosby violin
- Paloma So violin
- Máté Szücs viola
- Anastasia Kobekina cello
- Edgar Moreau cello
- Brendan Kane double bass
- Isata Kanneh-Mason piano
- Alexander Malofeev piano
Ill and weakened, Glinka found refuge near Lake Maggiore in the 1830s. There he met De Filippi, his doctor’s daughter, and fell in love with her. The beautiful, cultured young womangave him a new lease of creative energy, and he composed this highly original Sextet. A few years later, Glinka returned to Russia and made his mark on the country’s musical history with his operas A Life for the Tsar and Ruslan and Ludmila. The Sextet stands out for its delightful surprises, such as the gypsy interlude in the middle of a Beethoven-inspired slow movement, or the Russian-inspired modalising melody in the Finale.
Although composed in 1918, Elgar’s Quintet was inspired by the calm and gentle summer afternoons the composer spent in Sussex. The work is fresh and adventurous, like Dvořák’s Piano Quintet, while Elgar is said to have hidden a quotation of the Salve Regina in the opening four notes of the piano, a motif that proves structural for the work’s future.
In the slow movement, Elgar presents a highly expressive motif reminiscent of the Cello Concerto or the Enigma Variations, exploring, in the words of one of his close friends, ‘all the high emotions of which mankind is capable. The music conveys them with such truth and sincerity, and expresses the hidden meaning of things so much better thanwords, that it seems to be a message from another world’. The Finale replaces the fiery brilliance of Brahms’ works with a refinement of textures, relying on grandiose harmony and concentrated string writing to give his work the fervour of the greatest.