John Adams on Elgar’s Variations

American composer and conductor John Adams recently posted interesting and personal observations on Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

My program notes on the Variations for the upcoming concert of course pale in comparison. But then again they are “formal” program notes and not a blog post.

I’m a bit surprised at some of the comments. They either misunderstood what he was saying or were just willfully being ornery. The points he made that caused the most ire were observations that have been around for decades.

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