About
Blog
Music
Listen
Contact

       2014 KJCreative

Searching for Elgar

September 11, 2015

Some months ago, German documentary makers Axel Fuhrmann and Axel Brueggemann contacted me about appearing in their latest project, a film about Elgar and Land of Hope and Glory. They perhaps thought I would be an Elgar expert, having inherited the royal post which he so cherished. But I knew there was a huge gap where my Elgar knowledge ought to be.

 

There followed a long period of reading up on the subject. It has been a total pleasure. Few composers have been so sensitively and acutely written up as Elgar, with marvellous biographies by Michael Kennedy and Jerrold Northrop Moore, plus a host of charming monographs on just about every little feature of the great man’s life (I haven’t got through all of these yet…).

 

This being television, the film crew wanted to show me doing Elgar-like countryside things in the back garden. The new, looming skyscrapers of Elephant and Castle may have given the game away that this wasn’t Worcestershire.  My minutes in front of the camera wielding an apple-picker and secateurs gave me new admiration for Monty Don and his friends; there’s only so many times you can prune a hosta.  Elgar was also a great dog-lover, so my own dog’s sudden appearance on camera, chasing the next door cats, was much appreciated. “Now, can you just ask your dog to do exactly the same again?”

 

Please reload

Dover

December 2, 2019

Warlock v Sorabji

November 23, 2019

Kingsbury Green Academy, Calne

November 6, 2019

The Big Picture

November 1, 2019

Aberdeen Art Gallery

October 30, 2019

On the palmy beach

October 24, 2019

Blue hills beyond

October 20, 2019

Creative Ageing

October 14, 2019

Salisbury Cathedral

October 5, 2019

Cardiff Bay

September 30, 2019

Please reload