Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

Polonia, Op.76 Timing - 14:00

Sir Edward Elgar is considered today as the greatest composer of the Great British Empire. Certainly his ever-popular Pomp and Circumstance Marches seem to epitomise the Edwardian Era. But it is not well known that he also had a great interest and regard for Poland and Polish music.

One of the earliest published compositions of Elgar is a mazurka, a form of Polish dance as are the krakowiak and the polonaise that he wrote when he was twenty-five years old. The last work Elgar completed before his death was his orchestration of Chopin's Funeral March from the Second Piano Sonata.

In 1915, the Polish composer/conductor Emil Mlynarski asked Elgar to "write something" for a benefit concert in London for the Polish Victims Relief Fund, founded by the eminent pianist/composer (and future President of Poland) Ignacy Paderewski. Elgar had less than three months to complete it since the date of the premiere was scheduled for 6 July 1915. The result was his Polonia which was performed with Mlynarski's own symphony also titled Polonia.

In fact, there are other compositions entitled Polonia. The composers include Wagner, Liszt, as well as Paderewski who wrote a gigantic symphony with the same title. The Polish composer/conductor Andrzej Panufnik, in exile from Poland just as Chopin, Mlynarski, and Paderewski were before him, wrote his Polonia in 1959 and conducted it and Elgar's Polonia in the same concert. Lady Panufnik once told me in London how her husband felt so delighted and honoured to have done both the composing and the conducting.

Panufnik wrote that as he was composing his own Polonia, he thought "about Elgar's sombre and noble ‘Polonia,’ a work most evocatively echoing the heroic and tragic elements of Polish history."

Elgar's Polonia is almost totally forgotten today. This is a tragedy because it is a stirring symphonic prelude that ingeniously incorporates numerous Polish tunes including Plawinski's 1905 Warszawianka (a revolutionary song opposing the Russians) and a chorale called With the Smoke of Fire written after the bloody Cracow uprising in 1846.

The center of Elgar's Polonia is his heart-wrenching rendition of Chopin's Nocturne in G minor, Op.37, No.1, played as a violin solo. Elgar magically sets the Chopin with a quotation from Paderewski's Polish Fantasia in counterpoint. The final section of Polonia is built on the Dabrowski Mazurka that concludes the composition in a typically Elgarian Edwardian way.

Thanks to Dobrzynski, Chopin's classmate, who made this old folk tune even more popular in the nineteenth century with his own arrangement, the Dabrowski Mazurka became the Polish national anthem in 1926.

In the same London concert that premiered Elgar's Polonia, Paderewski's Polish Fantasia was also performed. Elgar aptly dedicated his Polonia to Paderewski. Their first meeting probably goes back to 9 May 1899 when a concert included Elgar's music and two piano concertos performed by Paderewski as the soloist. One of the concertos was Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.2.

December 3, 2005