Elgar wrote two major works for strings which are quite well known - the Serenade for Strings and the Introduction and Allegro. It comes as a surprise to many music lovers to discover that there is more, and in particular the short Sospiri. Sospiri is quite a late work, written in 1913 and first performed just after the outbreak of war in August 1914.

Though short, it is a major work of grave beauty, condensing years of nostalgic regret into a few minutes of music. It was written shortly after the death from cancer of Julia Worthington, an American whom the Elgars knew well, who was referred to by J.B.Yeats as "an intimate friend of the musician Elgar" and by Elgar's wife Alice as "our dear dear Pippa". Her illness and death upset Elgar and his wife deeply, and the Mahlerian intensity of Sospiri is something quite new in Elgar's music.

The first performance was in a promenade concert on 15th August, 1914, in a programme which reflected the enthusiasm and patriotism of the first weeks of the First World War - Sospiri was a premonition of the sadness and loss to come.