Description

Sir Edward Elgar - Piano Quintet, Violin Sonata - The Nash Ensemble / Helios Audio CD 2007 / CDH55301

UPC 034571153018

The Quintet in A minor for Piano and String Quartet, Op. 84 is a chamber work by Edward Elgar.

He worked on the Quintet and two other major chamber pieces in the summer of 1918 while staying at Brinkwells near Fittleworth in Sussex. W. H. "Billy" Reed considered that all three were "influenced by the quiet and peaceful surroundings during that wonderful summer".

The Quintet was first performed on 21 May 1919, by the pianist William Murdoch, the violinists Albert Sammons and W. H. Reed, the violist Raymond Jeremy and the cellist Felix Salmond. These players included some of the composer's musical confidantes – Reed worked with him on the Violin Concerto and the Third Symphony, and Salmond worked on the Cello Concerto with him. Albert Sammons later made the first complete recording of the Violin Concerto.

The work is dedicated to Ernest Newman, music critic of The Manchester Guardian.

Sir Edward Elgar wrote his Violin Sonata in E minor, Op. 82, in 1918, at the same time as he wrote his String Quartet in E minor and his Piano Quintet in A minor. These three chamber music works were all written at "Brinkwells", the country house near Fittleworth in West Sussex that Lady Elgar had acquired for her husband to recuperate and compose in, and they mark his major contribution to the chamber music genre. His Cello Concerto in E minor of 1919 completed the quartet of introspective and melancholy works that comprised Elgar's last major creative spurt before his death in 1934.