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Classical music captures the imagination in a unique way. Four recently released books examine four very different composers - Englishman Edward Elgar, Norwegian Edvard Grieg, German-born Londoner George Frideric Handel, and Austrian Gustav Mahler - who all left enduring and varied legacies. |
The music of composer Edward Elgar, born 150 years ago, remains as popular as ever. The Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstances Marches and Land of Hope and Glory are still heard today. In 1955, Diana McVeagh wrote Edward Elgar: His Life & Music but now she’s published Elgar the Music Maker to coincide with the anniversary of his birth.
What sort of legacy has Elgar left?
DM - He left half-a-dozen absolute masterpieces, worthy to rank with his predecessors and contemporaries in the UK and abroad. He also raised the status of the composer. He was the only composer of his time to refuse on principle to do another job to earn money. He accepted state honours: after him, the Order of Merit was bestowed on Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett. He fought to retain the post of Master of the King's Music. His 'Land of Hope and Glory' has become a second national anthem.
Read the rest of the interview | Find Elgar the Music Maker |
Norwegian composer and pianist Edvard Grieg enjoyed celebrity status akin to a modern-day rock star on his visits to Britain during his heyday from 1860 until the turn of the century. Lionel Carley examines these influential visits to a country that embraced Grieg’s music in a new book, Edvard Grieg in England.
"It had become clear to me that this particularly important aspect of Grieg’s life had hardly been considered by previous biographers and critics," said Carley, who examines Grieg’s time spent in Britain between 1862 and 1906.
Carley’s book describes how England experienced 'Grieg Fever' including "packed-out concert halls, extraordinary press coverage, and adulation on the part of Grieg’s audiences.
Read the rest of the interview | Find Edvard Grieg in England |
"After writing a comprehensive study of Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and having acted in one of them, I realised that his long neglected operas must have possessed a dramatic power that transcended their stilted form," said Dean, who also penned Handel’s Operas 1704-1726, a companion volume.
"Operas played the central role (in Handel’s career) until he was over 50. They were received mostly with enthusiasm, especially as he wrote for the greatest singers in Europe.
"Handel had extraordinary command of the subtlety and variety of human character (comic as well as serious), as expressed particularly in his operas. He was also a great melodist and master of the theatre orchestra."
Read the rest of the interview | Find Handel's Operas |
Discovering Mahler is Donald Mitchell’s fourth and final volume on Gustav Mahler – the Austrian post-Romantic composer and conductor. His earlier volumes are The Early Years, The Wunderhorn Years, and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death.
Why did you call the final volume Discovering Mahler?
DM – The essays represent in detail the history of my own personal discovering of Mahler and also the history of the evolution of comprehending Mahler and his music in cultures, and the UK in particular, which had been so long delayed.
When your first volume, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years, was published in 1958, his music was a specialized taste – now it’s popular. Why did it take so long?
Read the rest of the interview | Find Discovering Mahler |
