I’m in the final days of
rehearsals of Edward Elgar’s song-cycle Sea
Pictures, Op 37, with contralto Elizabeth Hale Knox.
This will be our third collaboration
performing Sea Pictures! We both are
enjoying a chance to revisit the work, as we continually find new layers and
twists.
I remain surprised,
however, that our performance is the only
one listed by the Elgar Society’s Performance Diary for this season, 2014-15.
I was even more surprised
to see the Wikipedia page for “Orchestral Song” makes no mention of Elgar’s
work!
Spotting the Orchestral
Song-cycle
Sea Pictures
was first performed on October 5, 1899 when Elgar was coming off his resounding
international success with the recent premiere of Enigma Variations.
Song-cycles (a set of songs grouped together to create a work) as large
orchestrated works were rather unusual at this time. It is possible that
English audiences had yet to hear an orchestral song-cycle.
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) usually comes to mind for orchestral song-cycles; he wrote his first song-cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ('Songs of a Wayfarer') in 1884-5. This was orchestrated in the 1890’s with the first performance in 1896, in Berlin. The first performance in England was 1927.
For Mahler, the 1890’s was full of song compositions, especially those from the poems collected in Des Knaben Wunderhorn ('The Youth's Magic Horn'). Mahler published a set for soprano or baritone and orchestra in 1905.
Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Deaths of Children) composed between 1901 and 1904, was first performed in Vienna in 1905. In England, the piano/voice version was first performed in 1913, the orchestral version not until 1924.
Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth") was first performed in Munich, in November 1911.
So much of Mahler’s song-cycle
works appear after the premiere of Elgar’s Sea Pictures; this is especially so
for British audiences.
Elgar Spotting in Chicago
Performances of Elgar’s Sea pictures were quite numerous for the
first years of the 20th century. Here in Chicago, there were 17 performances
between 1903 and 1932; then a large gap of 50 years. At this time, however, the
singer who would become the “definitive” voice of this work appeared - Dame
Janet Baker.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
performances of Elgar’s Sea Pictures
1903
January 30 & 31, 1903
Theodore Thomas, conductor
Kirkby Lunn, contralto
1904
April 29 & 30, 1904
Theodore Thomas, conductor
Muriel Foster, contralto
1905
January 20 & 21, 1905
Frederick Stock, conductor
Muriel Foster, contralto
1906
January 12 & 13, 1906
Frederick Stock, conductor
Kirkby Lunn, contralto
1914
April 10 & 11, 1914
Frederick Stock, conductor
Clara Butt, contralto
1921
February 11 & 12, 1921
Frederick Stock, conductor
Louise Homer, soprano
1922
April 14 & 15, 1922
Frederick Stock, conductor
Sophie Braslau, contralto
1932
January 16, 1932
Frederick Stock, conductor
Harriette Price, contralto
February 11 & 12, 1932
Frederick Stock, conductor
Muriel Brunskill,
contralto
1984
May 3, 4 & 6, 1984
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
Janet Baker, mezzo-soprano
Thirty-one years later – I
am thrilled to offer another Elgar spotting for the song-cycle Sea Pictures!
2015
Northwest Symphony Orchestra
March 22, 2015
March 22, 2015
Kim Diehnelt, conductor
Elizabeth Hale Knox, contralto
Resources for Sea Pictures
Have a listen to the
infamous Dame Janet Baker!