Celebrating Elgar’s Big Music with Small Ensembles

Two new arrangements to mark the anniversary of Elgar's birth!

Sea Pictures, op. 37 for mezzo and string quartet

"Composer Kim Diehnelt uses subtle tricks of her craft to evoke full orchestral nuance."

 

…”this will make the “Sea Pictures” available for singers unable to perform with an orchestra and bring the work to a wider audience. - Hyde Park Herald - M.L. RANTALA

The details: Each instrument part includes a small clued staff above showing the vocal line and lyrics. This makes rehearsal and performances much easier to coordinate without a conductor.

Arranged for string quartet and voice. The string parts include mention of when the player is playing the line of a distinct instrument to help the player create an appropriate character and blend. For example, when the viola player is playing a solo clarinet line the part is marked with “(clar)”; the marking “loco” designates a return to string playing.

The arrangement strives to create the colors and textures of the original orchestral version. It uses sometimes ingenious combinations to achieve these colors and textures. 

“Replacing a sprawling orchestra with just four string players is a big task ….. But the arrangement is true to the original and engaging in its own right.” Hyde Park Herald - M.L. RANTALA

For advanced players as the work makes full use of each instrument, double stops, and extended ranges. Each movement sold separately and contains both score and parts.

Movements 1, 2, 4 were first performed March 2016 at the Elgar Society (North America Branch) Conference in Chicago, by the Grant Street Quartet.

More on Elgar’s Sea Pictures, including Coaching Notes 

This sheet music is available world-wide via Sheet Music Plus  or J.W. Pepper

Symphony No. 1 in A flat Major - “Adagio” arranged for string quartet

“Even with only four voices, she was able to maintain a splendid multi-layered texture that captures the tension and the grace of the music. “Hyde Park Herald - M.L. RANTALA

The Details:  Includes performances instructions pertaining vibrato, bow placement etc. to help achieve the sound and characters of non-string instruments.

Score and parts sold separately. For advanced players as the work makes full use of each instrument, double stops, and extended ranges.

The “Adagio” was first performed March 2016 at the Elgar Society (North America Branch) conference in Chicago, by the Grant Street Quartet.

Reviews Here 

This sheet music is available world-wide via Sheet Music Plus 

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It is my hope to introduce more players and listeners to the music of Elgar, and to make these beautiful works more easily programmed by singers and ensembles. 

Happy Birthday, Elgar!  

Elgar Spotting – Sea Pictures

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.

Les nuits d'été song-cycle by Berlioz (1803 —1869) is often considered the first orchestral song-cycle. The songs were written in 1841, and fully orchestrated in 1856. Although single movements have been performed since then, I have yet to successfully track down its first performance as a complete 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.

Richard Strauss (1864-1949) is the other familiar orchestral song-cycle composer; the first performance of his Vier letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) was in May 1950.

Elgar Spotting in Chicago

Performances of Elgar’s Sea pictures were quite numerous for the first years of the 20^th 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

Kim Diehnelt, conductor

Elizabeth Hale Knox, contralto

Resources for Sea Pictures

Have a listen to the infamous Dame Janet Baker!

Dame Janet Baker: The complete "Sea pictures Op. 37" (Elgar)

Link to complete Sea Pictures lyrics

Coaching Notes for performers of Sea Pictures