Elgar's Wind Quintets – ‘Notes from the organ loft’

In addition to playing bassoon in a woodwind quintet (two flutes, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon) with his brother Frank, the young Edward Elgar wrote seven pieces of “Harmony Music” beginning in 1878, seven years before the publication of his Opus 1. The players for whom Elgar wrote the quintets were his young friends, who met regularly for music on Sunday afternoons in a garden shed behind his father’s shop.

This engaging, touching and revelatory new event created by Catherine Handley offers a window into the inner world of a young genius. Actor Hamish Macaulay reads a narrative derived from Elgar’s youthful letters which paint a picture of a young man of great talent looking for his voice and path in life, alongside the very music he was writing at the time he served as the organist here in Elgar’s own beloved St. George’s church.