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The Piano Quintet was the last of three chamber works that Elgar
composed at Brinkwells during the latter half of 1918, although
he started work on it before completing the String
Quartet and did not complete it until after his return to London early in
1919.
As with the quartet, Lady Elgar hinted at a programmatic basis
for the work, noting in her diary that the first movement
represented a group of trees in Flexham Park near Brinkwells.
According to legend, these trees comprised the remains of Spanish
monks who had engaged in sacrilegious ceremonies in the park.
In correspondence, Elgar too had described the first movement as
"ghostly stuff". Doubt has been cast on the legend, focusing
on the lack of record of any Spanish religious settlement in the
area. But this obscures the point that, whatever the factual
basis for the legend (and what legend contains more than a grain
of truth), Elgar appears again to have drawn his inspiration from
the natural beauty of the area surrounding the cottage at
Brinkwells.
As with the quartet,
the central movement is generally accepted
to be the finest of the quintet's three movements. The work
should however be viewed as a coherent whole, the jaunty tune
running through the first movement and what Elgar's close friend
George Bernard Shaw described as a jazz section in the final
movement providing a perfect counterfoil to the dreaminess of the
adagio.
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