The Dream of Gerontius and the two symphonies are Edward Elgar's masterpieces. But in this his 150th anniversary year, these works are missing completely from the BBC Proms, the self-styled 'world's greatest classical music festival'. Yet the same festival finds space for even more 'third pressing Mahler' (not my words) after last year's abundant crop.
But over in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, the Bard Music Festival (photo above) manages to include both The Dream of Gerontius and the E flat Symphony to huge acclaim, as part of a visionary celebration of Elgar's music.
Elgar once said "There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require." Clearly upstate New Yorkers require more of it than London concert goers.
Now read about Elgar carrying on Beethoven's business.
Header photo shows the stunning Frank Gehry designed Fisher Centre for the Performing Arts at Bard College, NY. Photo credit Bard.edu. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
