Event 43: Elgar Piano Quintet

Ferdinand David Ensemble

Miaoyin Qu (piano) Clive Brown (violin) Ilias Devetzoglou (violin) David Milsom (Viola) Cellist to be announced

In the aftermath of the First World War Elgar secluded himself for extended periods in a cottage, Brinkwells, in the Sussex countryside, where he composed three chamber works in quick succession alongside the Cello Concerto. These were to be his last major compositions. Of the chamber works, the Piano Quintet op. 84 was the longest; a couple of months before its premier at the Wigmore Hall on 21 May 1919, Elgar wrote to his friend, the organist Ivor Atkins, that it “runs gigantically and in a large mood”.

Two recordings of the work were made during Elgar’s lifetime. The first, issued in 1925, sounds distinctly more ‘old fashioned’ than the 1933 recording, for performing style was changing rapidly during these years. The Ferdinand David Ensemble draws upon information about Elgar’s approach to performance, as well as the evidence of these recordings, in an attempt to recreate a style and sound world that would have been familiar to the composer.