page_title: Symphony No. 1 (Elgar)
section_title: Composition and première
hierarchical_section_title: Symphony No. 1 (Elgar) / Composition and première
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Hans Richter&#32;– Austrian-Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor
context_page_description: Sir Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A♭ major, Op. 55 is one of his two completed symphonies. The first performance was given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester, England, on 3 December 1908. It was widely known that Elgar had been planning a symphony for more than ten years, and the announcement that he had finally completed it aroused enormous interest. The critical reception was enthusiastic, and the public response unprecedented. The symphony achieved what The Musical Times described as "immediate and phenomenal success", with a hundred performances in Britain, continental Europe and America within just over a year of its première.
  The symphony is regularly programmed by British orchestras, and features occasionally in concert programmes in North America and continental Europe. It is well represented on record, with recordings ranging from the composer's 1931 version with the London Symphony Orchestra to modern digital recordings, of which more than 20 have been issued since the mid-1980s.
context_section_description: Nearly ten years before composing his first symphony, Elgar had been intrigued by the idea of writing a symphony to commemorate General Charles George Gordon rather as Beethoven's Eroica was originally intended to celebrate Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1899 he wrote to his friend August Jaeger (the "Nimrod" of the Enigma Variations), "Now as to Gordon: the thing possesses me, but I can't write it down yet." After he completed his oratorio The Kingdom in 1906 Elgar had a brief fallow period. As he passed his 50th birthday he turned to his boyhood compositions which he reshaped into The Wand of Youth suites during the summer of 1907. He began work on a symphony and when he went to Rome for the winter he continued work on it, finishing the first movement. After his return to England he worked on the rest of the symphony during the summer of 1908.
  Elgar had abandoned the idea of a "Gordon" symphony, in favour of a wholly non-programmatic work. He had come to consider abstract music as the pinnacle of orchestral composition. In 1905 he gave a lecture on Johannes Brahms's Symphony No. 3, in which he said that when music was simply a description of something else it was carrying a large art somewhat further than he cared for. He thought music, as a simple art, was at its best when it was simple, without description, as in the case of the Brahms symphony. The first page of the manuscript carries the title, "Symphony for Full Orchestra, Op. 55." To the music critic Ernest Newman he wrote that the new symphony was nothing to do with Gordon, and to the composer Walford Davies he wrote, "There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future."
  The symphony was dedicated "To Hans Richter, Mus. Doc. True Artist and true Friend." It was premiered on 3 December 1908 in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, with Richter conducting the Hallé Orchestra. The London première followed four days later, at the Queen's Hall, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richter. At the first rehearsal for the London concert, Richter addressed the orchestra, "Gentlemen, let us now rehearse the greatest symphony of modern times, written by the greatest modern composer – and not only in this country." William Henry Reed, who played in the LSO at that concert, recalled, "Arriving at the Adagio, [Richter] spoke almost with the sound of tears in his voice and said: 'Ah! this is a real Adagio – such an Adagio as Beethove' would 'ave writ'."
  The Musical Times wrote in 1909, "To state that Elgar's Symphony has achieved immediate and phenomenal success is the bare truth." Within weeks of the première the symphony was performed in New York under Walter Damrosch, Vienna under Ferdinand Löwe, St. Petersburg under Alexander Siloti, and Leipzig under Artur Nikisch. There were performances in Chicago, Boston, Toronto and 15 British towns and cities. By February 1909 the New York Philharmonic Orchestra had given two more performances at Carnegie Hall and had taken the work to "some of the largest inland cities ... It is doubtful whether any symphonic work has aroused so great an interest since Tchaikowsky's Pathétique." In the same period the work was played six times in London, under the baton of Richter, the composer, and Henry Wood. Within just over a year there were a hundred performances worldwide.
  The Musical Times printed a digest of press comments on the symphony. The Daily Telegraph was quoted as saying, "[T]hematic beauty is abundant. It is exquisite in the adagio, and in the first and second allegros, the latter a kind of scherzo; when the rhythmic impulse, the power and the passion are at their extreme height, when the music becomes almost frenzied in its superb energy, the sense of sheer beauty is still strong." The Morning Post, wrote, "This is a work for the future, and will stand as a legacy for coming generations; in it are the loftiness and nobility that indicate a masterpiece, though its full appreciation will only be from the most serious-minded; to-day we recognise it as a possessio
caption: Hans Richter, the dedicatee, conducted the première of the symphony
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