Introduction and Allegro (Elgar)
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Sir Edward Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, opus 47, was composed in 1905 for performance in an all-Elgar performance by the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra. Scored for string quartet and string orchestra, Elgar composed it to show off the players' virtuosity. Though critical reception was initially lukewarm at best, Elgar's piece soon came to be recognized as a masterpiece. The work, which is roughly twelve to fourteen minutes in length, is in the form of one movement, with several prominent themes.
The piece opens with a tutti descending fanfare, which segues into a major-key moderato section. Elgar then introduces a slow, lyrical theme played by the solo viola. Elgar writes that this theme is a quotation of a song sung by a distant voice that he had heard during a vacation in Wales. An expressive, romantic section leads into a recapitulation of the opening fanfare and Welsh theme, ending the Introduction.
The Allegro begins with a theme in G major built around a quarter-eighth-eighth note motif. 21 measures of nonstop sixteenth-notes build from a soft piano to a powerful forte as the piece arrives at a hemiola-ridden G Major restatement of the Introduction's opening fanfare. Instead of a development section as would be expected from traditional sonata form, a new theme is introduced, a vigorous fugue in which the piece returns to the opening key of g minor. In a letter to his good friend A. J. Jaeger (Nimrod of the Enigma Variations), Elgar referred to this section as a "devil of a fugue." After the exhilarating fugue, the piece's themes are all recapitulated in G Major. Then the Welsh theme appears in all its splendor in a triumphant coda. The piece ends with a perfect cadence followed by a pizzicato G Major chord.
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