Nimrod (Enigma Variations, op. 36)

Elgar improvised a theme at the piano one evening in October 1898 and began varying it in the manner of friends who might have been listening; the fourteen variations that grew out of that hour carry their initials and nicknames. Hans Richter conducted the first performance in London on 19 June 1899 and the piece lifted Elgar out of provincial obscurity at forty-two. The ninth, Nimrod, portrays August Jaeger, his editor at Novello, and recalls a conversation about Beethoven at a moment when Elgar had thought of giving up composition altogether. The larger enigma he claimed remains unexplained.