Description
In 1878 Edward Elgar (then just 21), his brother Frank and friends Frank Exton and Hubert and Willie Leicester, used to meet on Sunday afternoons to rehearse in a shed behind his father’s music shop in Worcester. With two flutes, an oboe, a clarinet and a bassoon (played by a self-taught Elgar), this was not an orthodox wind quintet grouping, so Elgar arranged and wrote new work for the group.
Elgar gave the works the collective title ‘Shed Music’ and, whilst there are a couple of more substantial works, the majority – including the Adagio Cantabile – are short but delightful miniatures offering tantalising glimpses of Elgar’s emerging style.
This work is given the subtitle ‘Mrs Winslow’s Soothing Syrup’ – a popular ‘over-the-counter’ preparation to relieve babies’ teething pains and colic. However, containing dangerously high levels of both morphine and alcohol many youngsters sadly drifted off to sleep never to wake up again. Rather more innocently, the concoction’s name probably appealed to the word-game-loving Elgar who was inspired to write this gently lilting piece which is rearranged here for a standard wind quintet grouping.
Elgar’s Shed Music was lost for nearly 100 years before being rediscovered and broadcast on the BBC in 1976. Elgar’s music has been re-arranged here for the standard wind quintet grouping of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon.
