[winter breaks me at the start every time]
Click to viewEdward Elgar - Introduction and Allegro for Strings. Second part, the fugue, is here. A complete, slightly cleaner, more professional version is here, but I honestly like the interpretation of the first one a little better!
When I was 16, my high school orchestra played this. It was incredibly ambitious for a high school orchestra even to attempt - it was five minutes longer than almost any piece designated for our level, and getting four sections of high school musicians to play different parts is hard enough even before you divide each section in two and then layer a solo quartet on top of it. We worked on it for most of a semester.
I was the solo cellist - my first real solo ever, the one I took to my cello teacher with terrified desperation, only to get an incredulous summary of, "My god, why did they not ask violinist to play these notes? Would make more sense!" I couldn't actually tell you how the hell I did playing it - I don't remember much of the performance, and I couldn't play the piece itself anymore, for all that I lived in it for almost three months. The strongest memory I have of it is the first time we played it through with some degree of success - a breakthrough that came only two weeks before the concert, over which our conductor would undoubtedly have shed actual tears had the concertmaster not played the final note with such enthusiasm that her bridge snapped in two with a sound like a gunshot and flew clear across the room to smack into the opposite wall.
But, man--! What a fantastic piece! I didn't think much about what it sounded like, as a whole, when I was playing it, because I was in high school, and my thoughts extended no farther than Am I behind the violist? Am I drowning out the second violin? OH GOD PLEASE LET ME HIT THE HIGH E, PLEASE GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
It-- to me, it always sounded like water! Like many different kinds of water, of torrents and floods and waterfalls, but also rainshowers with a sharp wind behind them and the ripples that raindrops put in puddles, and sunny days beside quiet streams, and clouds heavy with rain that only threatens and does not come. And, ah--! What a spectacular ending! :D Oh, Elgar, this is why you are my favorite. <3