Bridge, Elgar, Ireland: English Cello Works

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor is a cornerstone of the cello repertoire, a product of the composer's summer seclusion in the English countryside in 1919. A masterpiece of moods, it encompasses the world-weary and poignant but also the quicksilver and passionate. Two other cello works written at around the same time proved pivotal in their composers' careers. John Ireland's Cello Sonata in G minor fuses brooding, terse muscularity with lyricism and bravura, while Frank Bridge's two-movement Cello Sonata in D minor reflects pre-War Romanticism coupled with wartime melancholy and defiance.