(Section E)
Led by LAURANCE TURNER
Conducted by JOHN BARBIROLLI
TREFOR JONES (tenor)
The ' Froissart ' Overture was the work with which Elgar made his first appearance at one of the great English Festivals-at Worcester, in 1890. It thus did a good deal to spread his fame, and was probably the first of his larger works to arouse anything at all like the interest which was even then his due. At the head of the score there is a quotation from Keats : ' ... when Chivalry lifted up her lance on high ' ; and Ernest Newman tells us that the Overture took shape in its composer's mind from that passage in Sir Walter Scott 's ' Old Mortality ', where Claverhouse speaks to Morton of his enthusiasm for the Froissart ' Chronicles.' The music is indeed eloquent of Elgar's idealized view of the old-world chivalry which Froissart presents to us with so much romance.