The Elgars in the Alps

I’m now singing with the Harbour Voices choir on Auckland’s North Shore. Our next concert will include some songs from one of Edward Elgar’s lesser-known works, From the Bavarian Highlands (Op 27). 

I’ve always loved Elgar’s music. In the long-ago days when I was a young single woman with an old-fashioned record player for company in the evenings, I repeatedly listened to the Cello Concerto, Enigma Variations, and the Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 better known as Land of Hope and Glory.

My interest in Elgar grew when I started visiting Malvern many years later. He was born in 1857 into a musical family living in the nearby village of Lower Broadheath. Their modest house is now a small National Trust museum called The Firs.

Elgar loved walking on the Malvern Hills, as I do, and perhaps it was the proximity of Alpine walks that led him and his wife Alice to spend a holiday in Garmisch, Upper Bavaria in 1894. 

     

Inspired by the lilting melodies of the folk songs and dances from the surrounding mountainous regions, the Elgars composed From the Bavarian Highlands between them. Edward wrote the music, in the form of songs for SATB voices with a piano accompaniment, and Alice wrote the lyrics. The Dance, with its tuneful joyful rhythms, is followed by the wistful False Love, the soothing Lullaby, and the gently spiritual Aspiration.

For any local readers of my blog who would like to attend the concert, here is the poster with the details.