Elgar's Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Op. 47

The Elgar's Instroduction and Allegro for strings is one of the most interesting piece of this english composer. I had the opportunity to conduct in 2004 with my chamber orchestra "Euterpe", enlarged for the occasion with other musicians. This is the live recording posted on my Youtube channel: 

This piece was composed in 1905, played by the London Symphony Orchestra and dedicated on Samuel Sanford, an american pianist and educator who brought Elgar's music to american attention. 

Structure

The piece opens with a tutti descending fanfare, which segues into a major-key moderato section, interspersed by an Allegretto e poco stringendo section consisting of two measures in length. Foreshadowing into a slow, lyrical theme played by the solo viola, Elgar cascades between solo voice and orchestra by use of echo. Elgar writes that this theme is a quotation of a song sung by a distant voice that he had heard during a holiday in Wales.^[3] An expressive, romantic section leads into a recapitulation of the opening fanfare and Welsh theme, ending the Introduction and transitioning jovially into the Allegro.

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 piano to a powerful forte as the piece arrives at a hemiola-infused G major restatement of the Introduction's opening fanfare. Instead of a development section as would be expected in 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 fugue concludes, the piece's themes are all recapitulated in G major, initially begun by a unison orchestra before dividing across echo between orchestra and solo quartet. With the Welsh theme repeating a succession of three times before striking a momentous ƒƒƒ, on which the orchestra is in unison again (see Polyphony), it is this time echoed by the solo quartet, a change from the rest of the piece. The Welsh theme appears in all its splendour in a triumphant coda for the fifth and final time, before ending with a ternary perfect cadence followed by a pizzicato G major chord.