On 13 and 14 January Jaime Martín conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in Hubert Parry’s Elegy to Johannes Brahms in Swansea and Cardiff.
The 13-minute work was composed as a tribute to Brahms in 1897 but did not receive its premiere until Parry’s own memorial service in 1918, where it was performed at the Royal College of Music and conducted by Charles Villiers Stanford. The piece, largely cast in A minor, begins with spare woodwind soli before the strings take up its lamenting theme. From there the orchestration darkens and the emotional character intensifies. A second theme, more pastoral in character, signals a temporary change of mood; its material bears similarities to Brahms’ A minor String Quartet and the third movement of his Symphony No.2. A stormy climax ensues before the piece works toward to a radiant conclusion in A major.
Martín recorded the work with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra alongside Schoenberg’s orchestration of the G minor Piano Quartet in 2019. It has been recorded twice by the London Philharmonic Orchestra – most recently with Matthias Bamert and with Adrian Boult in 1979. Though quite rarely performed – the case with much of Parry’s orchestral output – Elegy for Johannes Brahms has appeared at the Proms with Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2010, with the Philharmonic Orchestra and Geraint Bowen to close the Three Choirs Festival in 2018, with Andrew Manze and both the Finnish Radio Symphony and Gothenburg Symphony in Scandinavia, and with the Ulster Orchestra and Vernon Handley.