Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major, Op. 55, Op. 55

Elgar's First Symphony (1908) received 100 performances in its first year alone — an extraordinary reception that confirmed its composer's status as England's greatest living symphonist. The work is built around a noble opening march theme in A-flat major that returns at the end of the symphony to provide one of the most satisfying large-scale tonal resolutions in the Romantic canon, despite intervening in dark and searching D minor territory. The Adagio third movement is often cited as one of the great sustained stretches of orchestral lyricism in English music, and the symphony as a whole represents a late flowering of the Brahmsian tradition in an unmistakably English voice.