Anthony Bernard - Bernard and Elgar

Bernard and Elgar

Anthony Bernard played a role in the story of Edward Elgar's Concert Allegro, Op. 46, for piano solo. Elgar started to revise and shorten the piece after its first performance by Fanny Davies in 1901, and even toyed with the idea of turning it into a piano concerto. These revisions were never finished, and the original version was never published. Elgar may have given the manuscript away; in any event, it was not found in his papers at his death, and was considered lost. In around 1942, however, Bernard was given the manuscript (by whom is not recorded), and was asked to arrange the piece for piano and orchestra. He thought it worked better as a solo piano piece, and did no work on his commission. The manuscript was still in his study when it was bombed during World War II, and it was assumed destroyed along with other papers of his. After his death, however, his widow came across the manuscript. It came to the attention of the pianist John Ogdon and the musicologist Diana McVeigh, who together worked on it to extricate the original work from Elgar's crossings out, additions and changes, all made after Fanny Davies' first performance. Ogdon gave the first modern performance of the work in 1969.