Elgar’s Enigma Variations

Benjamin Britten, Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes
Gustav Mahler, Adagio from Symphony No. 10, Harold Farberman, conductor
William Walton, Cello Concerto
Edward Elgar, Enigma Variations

In its second season, The Orchestra Now (TŌN) continues its mission to create unique concert experiences for audiences of great orchestral music of the past and present. This performance features interludes from Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes, set in the English seaside. Harold Farberman, founder and artistic director of the Bard College Conductor's Institute, conducts Gustav Mahler's impassioned and sprawling Adagio from Symphony No, 10. Elgar's Enigma Variations caught hold of the Victorian imagination on two levels: for its dedication ("to my friend pictured within"), which invited listeners to equate the work with a photograph album, and by declaring the theme an "enigma" which tapped into the Victorian obsession with puzzles and wordplay. John Belk '17 plays William Walton's mysterious Cello Concerto. Walton revised the ending after the work's premiere, but the cellist died before it could be performed.