In 1908, the Hallé gave the world premiere of Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, setting the work up to conquer concert halls across Europe and the Atlantic. It seemed appropriate, then, that Sir Mark Elder’s first concert with the Manchester-based orchestra as its music director back in 2000 should feature Elgar’s great work. “I said to the players very early on,” the English conductor tells Apple Music Classical, “‘My dream for you all, and for me with you, is that we should be the greatest orchestra in the world for playing the music of our country.’” This ambition appears richly achieved in this double album of live yet remarkably polished performances of both Elgar’s First—recorded under the challenging conditions of COVID in September 2021—and Second Symphony, recorded earlier in 2018. There’s also a gentle epilogue in the form of The Prince of Sleep, an orchestral arrangement of an Elgar partsong by the Hallé’s Composer Emeritus, Colin Matthews (also recorded in September 2021). Matthews created this as a 75th birthday gift for Mark Elder in 2017, describing it as “the best tribute I could make to Mark for his many splendid Elgar performances”. Elgar claimed, after completing his First, that “the Symphony without a programme is the highest development of art”. Given this, Elder is understandably wary of speculating about its “meaning”. He concedes, though, that there is something of an emotional journey, beginning with one of Elgar’s most noble slow marches: “Its energy is catapulted forward by this lovely, slow, reflective, hopeful tune at the beginning, which by the work’s end, is victorious, incredibly brilliant and energetic.” A lot happens in the work’s 50 minutes before we get to that point, as Elder explains: “there is a scherzo of tremendous, furious energy—which is so unexpected—followed by a great ‘Adagio’. Then there’s an extraordinary introduction to the last movement with all those incredibly dark shadows. And with that darkness behind it, the peroration at the end, when this massive hope for the future, as Elgar called it, bursts out. Of course, it’s very moving. But I’d say it’s to do with his development as a composer and his confidence in himself, and wanting to express something for his fellow men.” With the Second Symphony, on the other hand, we know a great deal of what the music signifies. As Elder explains, “There are very, very deep shafts of feeling in both these symphonies, but the Second is more personal. It’s one of the key works that was inspired by Elgar’s love affair with ‘the other Alice’, as we call her—Alice Stuart-Wortley.” Elgar’s own wife, Alice, did everything she could to nurture anything that might inspire her husband’s music—and for that reason appears to have encouraged Elgar’s intense relationship with the “other Alice”, daughter of the celebrated painter John Everett Millais and the wife of a British member of parliament. “Windflower”, as Elgar nicknamed her, inspired some of his most expressive works, including his Violin Concerto, and the Second Symphony composed in 1911. “I think there’s no question that she was a different sort of Alice from his wife,” says Elder; “she was much more feminine and sensual. Their relationship was very, very deep, and passionate, although not consummated. And I think that very fact is actually described in the first movement.” Besides Windflower, Elgar’s Second was also inspired by at least two men important to the composer’s career and self belief. One was the Liverpool businessman and music lover Alfred Edward Rodewald: “Very early on in Elgar’s career,” says Elder, “Rodewald recognised a very strongly individual, rare British talent. He spoke up in support of Elgar before people really knew him, and they were very strong friends. Rodewald’s death from influenza was a great shock. The slow movement is really a requiem for him and a testament to their love, their friendship. The big climax towards its end, which is so moving and so powerful, was like Elgar needing to thank him, to acknowledge the enormous debt that he felt to him.” Then follows a high-speed scherzo (“Rondo. Presto”): “the terror in the middle of the third movement of the Second Symphony is something very difficult to comprehend. Of course, Elgar gave everybody something to hang onto by the quotations from Tennyson about the carriages going over a buried corpse, ‘...the hoofs of the horses beat, beat into my scalp and brain’, and all that. But it could just as well have been his incredible anguish about loving two women, and the pain that gave him.” In total contrast comes the finale, which Elder describes as “a very genial and warm-hearted portrayal of the conductor Hans Richter. Having started out rather formally and very German, he became a very close friend of Elgar’s. He said that the second subject of the last Symphony was a physical portrayal of Richter’s tummy. I always have to tell the orchestra, ‘make it round and make it rich’.” Yet, the ending is rather more poignant, as Elder relates: “the dying away at the end, in my view, has absolutely nothing to do with England and the end of Empire and all that. It has to do with the fact that this journey that Elgar needed to work through in himself has been expressed. And there is a sense of final resolution and calmness that makes the end of the symphony so moving.”