Leader, Alfred Barker
Conductor, H. Foster Clark
Harry Gill (baritone)
The first ' Wand of Youth ' Suite (the second was written very much later) is composed of music that Elgar wrote in 1869 for a children s play, when he was only twelve years old, and revived and scored for orchestra in his maturity. It was first played at a Queen's Hall symphony concert, conducted by Sir Henry Wood , in December, 1907, and has ever since been one of the most popular of Elgar's lighter suites.
Elgar has told us the origin of the idea of the music. ' Some small grievances occasioned by the imaginary despotic rule of my father and mother (The Two Old People) led to the devising of " The Wand of Youth". By means of a stage-allegory (which was never completed) it was proposed to show that the children were never properly understood. The scene was a woodland glade, intersected by a brook. The hither side of this our fairyland. Beyond, small and distant, was the ordinary life which we forgot as often as possible. The characters, on crossing the stream, entered fairyland and wen: transformed.'