Organ Sonata (Elgar)

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The Sonata in G major, Op 28 is Sir Edward Elgar's only sonata composed for the organ. It also exists in an arrangement for full orchestra made after Elgar's death. (A second organ sonata was arranged by Ivor Atkins from Elgar's Severn Suite, written as a test piece for a 1930 brass band competition)

There are four movements:

I. Allegro maestoso

II. Allegretto

III. Andanto espressivo

IV. Presto (comodo)

The genesis of the work was a request to Elgar to write an organ voluntary for a convention of American organists in the English city of Worcester in 1895. Instead, Elgar decided on a four movement sonata of nearly half an hour's length. It was first performed by the Worcester Cathedral organist, Hugh Blair, in July 1895.

The outer movements follow the classic sonata form; the inner movements are in three-part A-B-A form. Michael Kennedy^[1] observes that to play the finale successfully the organist needs to be a mental and physical athlete.

The work was dedicated to Elgar’s friend and fellow-musician, Charles Swinnerton Heap (1847-1900).

1 Orchestration
2 Recordings
3 References
4 Notes

[edit] Orchestration

In the 1940s, the decade after Elgar’s death, the publishers decided that an orchestration of the sonata should be commissioned, and having consulted the composer’s daughter and the conductor Sir Adrian Boult, they entrusted the job to Gordon Jacob. The orchestrated sonata was performed in 1946 (by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Boult). It was neglected for decades thereafter, being revived in the 1980s in a recording by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. The notes to that recording aver that ‘due to Jacob’s sympathetic scoring the version may be described as Elgar’s Symphony No 0,’ though this may be thought an optimistic claim, as nearly twenty years after the recording was made Handley’s remains the only one in the catalogue, compared with three recordings of Anthony Payne’s ‘elaboration’ of Elgar’s sketches for the Symphony No 3.

[edit] Recordings

The organ sonata has been recorded by, inter alia, Jennifer Bate; Christopher Bowers-Broadbent; Carlo Curley; Gareth Green; Christopher Herrick; Donald Hunt^[2]; Nicolas Kynaston; Simon Preston; Wolfgang Rübsam; Arturo Sacchetti; and Herbert Sumsion.

The orchestrated version was recorded in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool in 1988 for EMI.