‘Enigma’: Elgar’s Great Musical Riddle from London

What is the hidden theme of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations? That question still hovers over a work filled with portraits, clues and melodies that seem to flow beyond the music itself.

Elgar, known for Pomp and Circumstance, composed the variation cycle as a musical puzzle. Contemporaries could quickly identify the person represented by “Nimrod”, but other movements, marked only by two or three letters, remained unexplained for years.

The podcast follows the traces of elegant women, eccentric men and the proud owner of a dog that falls into the water, saves itself and then barks happily. What caricature does in visual art, the episode suggests, becomes audible in Elgar’s music.

Listeners hear selections from a highly praised recording released by RCA in the late 1950s as part of its Living Stereo series. The London Symphony Orchestra performs under Pierre Monteux, in an interpretation regarded as exemplary both artistically and technically.

Friedrich Gulda provides a piano encore, which leads back to the largest riddle Elgar left his listeners: the identity of the theme underlying the Enigma Variations. Wilhelm Sinkovicz presents the episode through the Presse podcast Musiksalon, a series that introduces recordings from his personal selection to both classical-music enthusiasts and newcomers.