# Edward Elgar: Enigma Variations



## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

How do you rate this piece and what is your favourite movement?

This is the original theme.






Nimrod is probably the most famous variation of it.






Here below you find the full piece (original theme + 14 variations).


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Favorite variation: VII (Troyte). So lively and fun! Brilliantly scored, as is most any of Elgar. This is by far his most popular orchestral work and with good reason. I get a chance to play it every couple of years and I've never tired of it; although I know a lot of string players who get terrified of it (II is notoriously difficult for violins.)


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

It seems essential to me. 6/6.

Although I won't say it directly resembles one of your favorites, The Lion King, it is what you call of a similar inspiration and mood. There are also some works (some people) can be allowed to say there is no favorite movement, and I usually think people should offer up their favorite as an initial recommendation, but for Enigma I don't think so. I think it seems to all go together like a Wagner opera.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

mbhaub said:


> Favorite variation: VII (Troyte). So lively and fun! Brilliantly scored, as is most any of Elgar. This is by far his most popular orchestral work and with good reason. I get a chance to play it every couple of years and I've never tired of it; although I know a lot of string players who get terrified of it (II is notoriously difficult for violins.)


I always loved playing Enigma Vars - great bassoon part!! I read somewhere that Elgar always paid much attention to the bassoon parts in his works....it shows in the EV....


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Heck148 said:


> I always loved playing Enigma Vars - great bassoon part!! I read somewhere that Elgar always paid much attention to the bassoon parts in his works....it shows in the EV....


Those grunts in the contra in RBT (III) always get a chuckle from other orchestra members. And I get annoyed with conductors who have the double basses play the cue that's in their parts. 

The first part in Dorabella (X) is always fun to hear - I never get to play it though; I'm always on contra.

Elgar was a bassoonist, to some degree. Don't know how good he was. I wonder if that influenced his scoring. Violinists have told me that you can tell he played violin - pretty well, apparently - because the parts, although difficult at times - are always playable and written by someone who really understood bowing and hand positions.


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## HenryPenfold (Apr 29, 2018)

Voted excellent. My favourite part is Nimrod, of course


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## Ethereality (Apr 6, 2019)

Okay, if you're hesitant then a good sample would be Variation 7 through the first part of 10, Troyte through Nimrod. I looove Variation 8.


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## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

Ethereality said:


> Okay, if you're hesitant then a good sample would be Variation 7 through the first part of 10, Troyte through Nimrod. I looove Variation 8.


Theme, 8, 9, 12 and 14.


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## HansZimmer (11 mo ago)

Ethereality said:


> It seems essential to me. 6/6.
> 
> Although I won't say it directly resembles one of your favorites, The Lion King, it is what you call of a similar inspiration and mood. There are also some works (some people) can be allowed to say there is no favorite movement, and I usually think people should offer up their favorite as an initial recommendation, but for Enigma I don't think so. I think it seems to all go together like a Wagner opera.


I don't think that there is any movement that sound like the Lion King score, but if we want to speak about film scores, don't you think that some parts of Enigma sound a bit like this piece?


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## Dimace (Oct 19, 2018)

HansZimmer said:


> I don't think that there is any movement that sound like the Lion King score, but if we want to speak about film scores, don't you think that some parts of Enigma sound a bit like this piece?


Dave Grusin! What a composer, what a score, what a film! LOVEEEEEEEE!!!


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I voted Very good but it's a masterpiece, one of the most beautiful pieces in Elgar's oeuvre .


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Excellent. Perhaps I should declare an interest as I've lived in Elgar country for most of my life and been a parishioner throughout that time at the church where he played the organ, but I'd have loved a good deal of his music even if I lived in Timbuctoo. Favourite movement of the "Enigma" Vars.for me is probably the finale, brimming as it does with _joie de vivre._


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## David Phillips (Jun 26, 2017)

Thanks for posting the interesting video of the Warsaw Philharmonic - the guy on the timps really has an evening out. Watching the players it's evident how cleverly Elgar writes for each instrument. As has been said, the bassoons have gorgeous parts.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Love it. I even love Bernstein's controversial take on it.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

Excellent, a masterpiece in my opinion. Nimrod is my favorite part.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

It's hard to overstate the importance of this work, since it didn't only turned Elgar into a celebrity overnight, it also put English orchestral music on the European map.
I like recordings that keep the music fresh and light, specially in the last variation that's prone to some pomposity. Regarding Nimrod, Elgar's own recordings should be observed. Too slow and it breaks up the whole piece - it should sound as an integral part of the whole, not like the slow movement of a symphony.



Enthusiast said:


> Love it. I even love Bernstein's controversial take on it.


I find that recording bordering on the obscene, sorry. Berstein made himself more important than Elgar - and the hostile response of the orchestra was more than justified.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^ Sorry to wave something obscene under your nose but I feel that great music has within it a large variety of possible interpretations. I should also warn you against swallowing the old English tendency to make a religion out of "how Elgar should be played". What Bernstein did was a good response to that!

Lennie was, of course, no stranger to initially hostile European orchestras. The Vienna Philharmonic hated his Mahler and almost refused to do what he wanted. We got great recordings of Mahler 5 and 6 from their coming together, however.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Enthusiast said:


> ^ Sorry to wave something obscene under your nose but I feel that great music has within it a large variety of possible interpretations. I should also warn you against swallowing the old English tendency to make a religion out of "how Elgar should be played". What Bernstein did was a good response to that!


Nowadays everyone and his uncle is bashing English music critics, Grammophone, English traditions, English music institutes. I guess it has something to do with nationalism (even the healthy kind) going out of fashion and being replaced by bland internationalism. And while some criticism would be justified 50 years ago, today it's like flogging a dead horse. With orchestras being standardized all over the world, and foreign jet-set conductors polishing and molding the orchestral sound so everything sounds the same everywhere, there's hardly any trace left of English traditionalism.


> Lennie was, of course, no stranger to initially hostile European orchestras. The Vienna Philharmonic hated his Mahler and almost refused to do what he wanted. We got great recordings of Mahler 5 and 6 from their coming together, however.


Let's face it, in his later years, Bernstein was a deranged egomaniac and the best example of a musician who should have quit when he was still ahead, but didn't.
What he did wasn't persuing a personal interpretation of multi-interpretatable music, it was putting his ego in front of the music and the composer. Ironically, Elgar is very rare example of a romantic composer who recorded his own work so we know to a certain extend how he wanted his music to sound. So as a modern-day interpreter you have to have pretty good arguments to deviate significantly from the standards that the composer set. And no, Lenny didn't have any good arguments, he just wanted to play the stereotypical rude American know-it-all and ruffle the stuffy British jimmies a bit.
And it's not that foreign conductors couldn't ever play Elgar in a way that pleased the British press. See Solti, who made initially controversial recordings of the Elgar symphonies, but he respected the music and studied the way Elgar himself performed the symphonies, with electrifying results. And he got praised for that, not in the last place by the English press.
So that's the polar opposite of what Bernstein did.

Regardling Bernstein's Mahler - sure, as a Mahler pioneer he knew what he was doing. But the fact that the VPO (and the BPO too) disliked Mahler didn't have anything to do with the conductor. They just disliked the music, it wasn't in their blood yet the way Bruckner was. So yeah, he did a fine job with Mahler.
But let's talk Sibelius - and the recordings of the 1st and 2nd symphonies he did with the VPO. The most wretched, demented and perverse versions in the complete Sibelius discography. But of course the Lenny fans out there will try and defend those too.


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

I rate the work quite highly --- it's excellent to me, but I seldom listen to it. When I want to listen to Elgar, I usually listen to _Sea Pictures_, the 2nd symphony, the _Violin Concerto_, _Sospiri_, _Introduction & Allegro_, _The Music Makers_ or the chamber works.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

RobertJTh said:


> Nowadays everyone and his uncle is bashing English music critics, Grammophone, English traditions, English music institutes. I guess it has something to do with nationalism (even the healthy kind) going out of fashion and being replaced by bland internationalism. *And while some criticism would be justified 50 years ago*, today it's like flogging a dead horse. With orchestras being standardized all over the world, and foreign jet-set conductors polishing and molding the orchestral sound so everything sounds the same everywhere, there's hardly any trace left of English traditionalism.


The Bernstein recording we are discussing was from some 50 years ago so I was more or less on the nail, it seems.



RobertJTh said:


> Let's face it, in his later years, Bernstein was a deranged egomaniac and the best example of a musician who should have quit when he was still ahead, but didn't.
> What he did wasn't persuing a personal interpretation of multi-interpretatable music, it was putting his ego in front of the music and the composer.


OK, you don't like the later Bernstein recordings. Lots of people do (even if not the Elgar) so I assume you are aware that you a just expressing an opinion, even if you do use the language of fact?



RobertJTh said:


> Ironically, Elgar is very rare example of a romantic composer who recorded his own work so we know to a certain extend how he wanted his music to sound. So as a modern-day interpreter you have to have pretty good arguments to deviate significantly from the standards that the composer set.


Quite a few noted composers recorded their music. Many ignored their own markings and others praised recordings quite unlike their own. Many conductor friends of composers are known to have performed their friend's music very differently from each other and from the composer. A composer as a performer is not a composer as a composer. Elgar's own recordings tend to be quite a lot faster than most other conductors so presumably those conductors - I include very sane and sober musicians like Boult - did not feel that Elgar's own recordings were a mere aspect of the score?

I am not a great believer in it being essential to follow what we believe are a composer's wishes, anyway. That sounds too rigid to me and seems to put the music in the museum. I am comfortable deciding if a given performance is true to the music while also, ideally, telling me something new about it. After all, I only have to please myself and my own taste. I can share that but I'm not saying others should agree: some will, others won't.

I think your aesthetic philosophy is very different to mine and suspect we will not agree on these matters. No worries.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Enthusiast said:


> The Bernstein recording we are discussing was from some 50 years ago so I was more or less on the nail, it seems.


Except that the criticism that this recording met back then is still valid today.


> OK, you don't like the later Bernstein recordings. Lots of people do (even if not the Elgar) so I assume you are aware that you a just expressing an opinion, even if you do use the language of fact?


Well, he WAS an egomaniac and he DID put his ego in front of the composer and the music. Whatever resulted from that attitude one may or may not like, that's the "opinion" side of the matter.


> Quite a few noted composers recorded their music. Many ignored their own markings and others praised recordings quite unlike their own. Many conductor friends of composers are known to have performed their friend's music very differently from each other and from the composer.


In a time when performances were rare and recordings even rarer, composers generally felt sympathetic towards musicians who played and recorded their works. Sibelius praised every recording of his symphonies, no matter how fast, slow, good or bad. That doesn't say he (or Elgar) was happy with every interpretative detail of those performances.


> A composer as a performer is not a composer as a composer. Elgar's own recordings tend to be quite a lot faster than most other conductors so presumably those conductors - I include very sane and sober musicians like Boult - did not feel that Elgar's own recordings were a mere aspect of the score?


There have been given lots of different explanations for those fast tempi - the limitations of the medium, the dry acoustics of the recording venues or the composer's boredom with his own music. Or maybe it had something to do with the performance practice of the time. At the premiere, the tempi of Wagner's Ring were faster than any modern recording, and still the composer thought they were too slow. Or take Holst, conducting The Planets on two occasions, pretty fast but not extremely so. Or anything that Richard Strauss recorded.
Thing is, even if Boult and Barbirolli were slower than Elgar himself, they stayed within reasonable parameters. They didn't play Nimrod at half speed.


> I am not a great believer in it being essential to follow what we believe are a composer's wishes, anyway. That sounds too rigid to me and seems to put the music in the museum. I am comfortable deciding if a given performance is true to the music while also, ideally, telling me something new about it. After all, I only have to please myself and my own taste. I can share that but I'm not saying others should agree: some will, others won't. I think your aesthetic philosophy is very different to mine and suspect we will not agree on these matters. No worries.


Yes, that's pretty much the diametric opposite of my own aesthetic vision, but like you say, that's fine. The world would be a pretty boring place if we all liked the same stuff. And I just happen to hate Bernstein


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## erudite (Jul 23, 2020)

Enigma Variations is certainly one of my firm favourites, yet in the grand scheme of things I rate it as Very Good.

Dorabella is my variation. It transports me back to a Victorian/Edwardian warm summer English garden… bliss.


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