This overture, composed in 1890 when Elgar was 33, was his first orchestral score of any size and importance to be performed and published; previously he had written a succession of small salon pieces, but nothing of any consequence. The inspiration to tackle a work of this stature came as a result of a commission from the Worcester branch of the Three Choirs Festival, and this commission stood him in good stead when Novello decided to take a chance on condition that the young Elgar agreed to assign the copyright to the publishers without payment. Elgar's own recording, made of course many years later, is a particularly impressive one, Sir Thomas Beecham's recently formed London Philharmonic Orchestra making a fine showing compared with some of Elgar's earlier and sometimes rougher discs.

As so often in this collection of textual reports, the published parts give a significantly different text from that in the score; the most surprising error in the score is one entire bar (3–2Z) where 2.Cor plays, but in the score is entirely tacet.

sources

A  Autograph score of final version, in the Elgar Birthplace Museum

E  Full score, published by Novello in 1901 (Pl. No.11191)

P  Orchestral parts (Novello); the string parts were published already in 1890 (Pl. No.9031), but the wind only in 1901 (Pl. No.11184). P exhibits many differences from E; the two sources have been carefully collated for the present report

R  Elgar's recording with the LPO (1933)

Ue  Urtext edition, edited by Sarah Thompson and published by the Elgar Society in 2013 in one volume together with Cockaigne and In the South. Both A and P were consulted in order to correct most errors in E, but P was not rated authentic, so many readings in P are given only in editorial brackets, others omitted without mention. In an attempt to strive for complete consistency huge quantities of editorial markings are added; the result is overfussy, and seems unlikely to be what Elgar intended

Since there are 24 bars between rehearsal letters T and V, a new letter U, at a tempo 11V, is suggested and used in the following report.