Conducting this all-Elgar programme is Sakari Oramo, the Finnish conductor who has been all but adopted by English music-lovers and orchestras - for ten years he was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and since 2013 he has held the post of chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

It was during the winter of 1900–01 that Elgar began to sketch what he hoped would turn into his first symphony. However, the sketches were quickly absorbed into several shorter pieces, one of which was the Cockaigne overture - an unashamedly populist portrait of ‘old London town’

As for the First Symphony, seven years would pass before its première in Manchester and subsequent London performance.

Reviews of their previous Elgar release (BIS1879):
‘The opening movement is propelled strongly, the Elgarian swagger is exploited well and that ghostly passage suggesting a malign presence in a garden seems particularly eerie here...Altogether a very impressive Elgar programme’ - MusicWeb International

‘Stockholm strings... are supreme in atmospheric pianissimos...It's typical of the thoughtful Oramo, too, that he chooses to fill the rest of the disc with tender, veiled string elegies to complement the sunset Symphony’ - BBC Music Magazine