Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto is a dark and heartbreaking work by this most English of composers, reckoned to be the most popular of all concertos for the cello.
The premiere of the Cello Concerto was on 27 October 1919 with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Queen's Hall in London, the piece having been written during the summer of that year at his home at 'Brinkwells' in Sussex, where during previous years he could hear the war in France at night with the sound of artillery rumbling across the Channel. The soloist for the first performance was Felix Salmond and was conducted personally by Elgar.
Elgar died in 1933 but hummed the concerto's opening theme to a friend during his final illness, telling him that "If ever after I'm dead you hear someone whistling this tune on the Malvern Hills, don't be alarmed. It's only me."
J.B. Priestley used the concerto in his 1948 play The Linden Tree in which the daughter of the play's main character -- an ageing professor of history who is being pressured to retire -- is a cellist, and in Act II she practises the concerto offstage.
Probably the best-loved performance of this piece, albeit not totally keeping to the score, is that by Jacqueline du Pré whose performance of the piece in 1961 with the London Symphony Orchestra brought her international recognition, repeated in that of 1965, both with Sir John Barbirolli conducting. It is an interesting footnote that Sir John was a 19 year old member of the orchestra at the premiere of the piece in 1919.