Symphony No. 1 (Elgar)

Sir Edward Elgar's Symphony No. 1 in A♭ major, Op. 55 is one of his two completed symphonies. The first performance was given by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Hans Richter in Manchester, England, on 3 December 1908. It was widely known that Elgar had been planning a symphony for more than ten years, and the announcement that he had finally completed it aroused enormous interest. The critical reception was enthusiastic, and the public response unprecedented. The symphony achieved what The Musical Times described as "immediate and phenomenal success", with a hundred performances in Britain, continental Europe and America within just over a year of its première.

The symphony is regularly programmed by British orchestras, and features occasionally in concert programmes in North America and Europe. It is well represented on record, with recordings ranging from the composer's 1931 version with the London Symphony Orchestra to modern digital recordings, of which more than 20 have been issued since the mid-1980s.

Nearly ten years before composing his first symphony, Elgar had been intrigued by the idea of writing a symphony to commemorate General Charles George Gordon rather as Beethoven's Eroica was originally intended to celebrate Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1899 he wrote to his friend August Jaeger (the "Nimrod" of the Enigma Variations), "Now as to Gordon: the thing possesses me, but I can't write it down yet." After he completed his oratorio The Kingdom in 1906 Elgar had a brief fallow period. As he passed his 50th birthday he turned to his boyhood compositions which he reshaped into The Wand of Youth suites during the summer of 1907. He began work on a symphony and when he went to Rome for the winter he continued work on it, finishing the first movement. After his return to England he worked on the rest of the symphony during the summer of 1908.

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