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dward Elgar never felt entirely comfortable at the top. As a new member of a London club, some time in the reign of Edward VII, a fellow composer – Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the well-connected head of the Royal College of Music – saw him dithering over the cheeseboard. ‘Why don’t you try the Port Salut?’ Mackenzie suggested, before lowering his voice to whisper, sarcastically ‘Salut d’Amour’. Elgar might have been knighted; he might have been acclaimed by Richard Strauss as Britain’s pre-eminent modern composer. But his clubbable, expensively-educated British colleagues quietly noticed his awkwardness and his Worcestershire vowels. As to the fact that he’d written bestselling salon favourites like Salut d’Amour; well, they were too polite to suggest that it was just a little bit – you know – common. But once in a while, they’d give him a quick kick in the shins – just to remind him. Elgar was a Roman Catholic – a faith that a mere 30 years before his birth had been denied full civil rights in the UK – and the more you dig into Elgar’s ‘Britishness’, the more complicated it gets. His music never quotes an English folk song even once; its roots are deep in the language of Brahms and Wagner. When Danny Boyle began the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony with ‘Nimrod’ from the Enigma Variations (performed by the LPO on 9 November 2019), it was supposed to evoke a traditional, rural England. In fact, ‘Nimrod’ is a musical portrait of Elgar’s great friend August Jaeger – a German immigrant. The composer meant it to evoke not green and pleasant fields, but a slow movement by Beethoven. For the ultimate statement of musical Britishness, it’s got surprisingly international roots. Our 2019 Isle of Noises festival takes that paradox and revels in it. This is a celebration of British music that understands that even the most familiar masterpieces
6 | London Philharmonic Orchestra
For nine decades the London Philharmonic Orchestra has been at the heart of music-making in London, in the British Isles and in Europe – and we know that there’s never been any one thing called ‘British music’. Throughout 2019 we’ll be celebrating over three centuries of music in these islands: Richard Bratby introduces our festival.
have a fascinatingly diverse heritage. Gustav Holst came from an immigrant family, and The Planets (23 October) is a journey towards blissful dissolution (nibbāna, if you like) that takes its philosophical basis from his lifelong fascination with Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. Benjamin Britten might seem like the ultimate Establishment figure, and yes, he used to take tea at Sandringham with the Queen Mother. But the fact that a gay composer (and a conscientious objector into the bargain) could become such a national institution in his own lifetime gives pause for thought. His Violin Concerto (27 September) was written in the USA and draws on Britten’s interest in the Second Viennese School. It’s a story that you encounter again and again throughout British music. The best pieces are the unexpected and obstinate ones, the hybrids that push insolently up through the cracks. When Ralph Vaughan Williams composed his ballet Job (7 December), he called it a ‘Masque’, invoking the era of Purcell and Lawes because he didn’t like the idea of polite audiences commenting ‘oh, did you see God at the ballet?’ In the event, audiences expecting something soothing from the composer of The Lark Ascending saw a green, semi-naked Satan dancing to music of angular strangeness. The agnostic Vaughan Williams came from an oldestablished family