Both patri­ot­ic and mov­ing in equal mea­sure, Sir Edward Elgar’s Nim­rod vari­a­tion is a sta­ple of British patri­ot­ic events such as the Last Night of the Proms, the open­ing of the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don, and the coro­na­tions of Eliz­a­beth II and Charles III, whilst its som­bre nature lends itself equal­ly well to the Remem­brance Day ser­vice at the Ceno­taph, and funer­als such as those of Princess Diana and Prince Philip. It is the ninth and best-known vari­a­tion in Elgar­’s Enig­ma Vari­a­tions, an orches­tral work of four­teen vari­a­tions on an orig­i­nal theme com­posed between 1898 and 1899.

Each vari­a­tion is also a musi­cal sketch of mem­bers of Elgar­’s fam­i­ly and close cir­cle of friends and con­tains, in Elgar’s words, “a dis­tinct idea found­ed on some par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty or per­haps on some inci­dent known only to two peo­ple”. Thus, each vari­a­tion con­tains a per­son­al expres­sion from Elgar of an aspect of each subject’s per­son­al­i­ty, or an event they shared, and the sub­jects are iden­ti­fied by either ini­tials or a nick­name: for exam­ple, the first vari­a­tion is “CAE” (Elgar’s wife, Car­o­line Alice); oth­ers include “RBT” (Oxford clas­si­cist Richard Bax­ter-Town­shend), “Troyte” (archi­tect Arthur Troyte Grif­fith) and so on.

Vari­a­tion IX (Ada­gio) “Nim­rod” is a por­trait of Augus­tus J. Jaeger, Elgar’s edi­tor and pub­lish­er, and close friend. Nim­rod is the great hunter of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the piece is so named through a play on words: Jäger in Ger­man means ‘hunter’. This serene vari­a­tion rep­re­sents the years of advice and encour­age­ment giv­en to Elgar by Jaeger, when Elgar was suf­fer­ing depres­sive episodes and lack of con­fi­dence in his work. Jaeger had remind­ed him that Beethoven had had sim­i­lar anx­i­eties and yet his music had only increased in beau­ty; in trib­ute to this moment, Nim­rod’s open­ing moments evoke sub­tle hints of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8.

The piece builds through long phras­es of swelling dynam­ics and rip­pling melody, and the emo­tion­al cli­max comes slow­ly but sure­ly. Solemn and evoca­tive, Nim­rod has every­one reach­ing for their han­kies. Enjoy this ver­sion fea­tur­ing Gus­ta­vo Dudamel con­duct­ing the Simon Boli­var Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.