Sir, - In his review of the NSO concert of 4th May, Douglas Sealy was rightly generous in his praise of the orchestra and Vernon Handley in their performance of the Elgar/Payne Symphony No. 3. But I feel he is wide of the mark in some of his comments on the music.
Phrases such as "chauvinistic self-confidence" and words like "bombast" were used 40 or 50 years ago by critics and writers who pronounced Elgar's music as dead and buried, dark days when of his orchestral works only the Enigma Variations got an occasional performance.
If Elgar's music can in any way be linked with notions of imperial grandeur, then the Cello Concerto of 1919 at the latest can be said to have put an end to that, the experience of the first World War having disillusioned Elgar in this respect.
The idea that "the British Empire. . .is still the swelling theme with all its pomp and circumstance" in the Third Symphony is in every sense simply out of date. (If politics have to be brought into this, it is worth noting that in 1932-33, when Elgar was working on his third symphony, Hitler was about to come to power in Germany.)
What is expressed in much of Elgar's music - and in my view the Third Symphony shares this feature with the previous two - is the complexity of the man himself: a mixture of confidence in his ability (though dimmed by 1932 - it was the love of a young woman which set Elgar's creative powers racing again), passionate love of his own music, and radical self-doubt and pessimism.
This complexity, I would suggest, is at the foundation of the contrast, to which Sealy alludes, between the swagger of much of the last movement on the one hand, and the tragic intensity of the Adagio and the resignation of the quiet close of the symphony on the other, where the viola solo at the end of the Adagio is recalled. - Yours, etc.,
Tony Williams, Ashbrook, Howth Road, Dublin 3.