After the death of his wife Alice in 1920 Edward Elgar wrote little new music, though he was very active in the recording studio. Towards the end of his life he began to return to large scale composition, with attempts at an opera and dabbling with ideas for a symphony. Elgar's old friend George Bernard Shaw had often badgered Elgar about a possible third symphony, and suggested that the BBC might be persuaded to commission it. Eventually, in December 1932, the BBC announced a formal commission, and Elgar spent much time during 1933 working on the symphony, sometimes playing fragments of it with his friend the violinist W. H. Reed.

Tragically, the work was to be cut short. In October 1933, after an exploratory operation, cancer was diagnosed and Elgar declined rapidly. He composed no more and died in February 1934, leaving over 130 pages of sketches for the unfinished symphony.

"The symphony is all bits and pieces, no-one would understand it, no-one. Don't let anyone tinker with it. I think you had better burn it." The words of Elgar to Reed, in his last months, were clear. But (unlike Sibelius) Elgar had not burnt it, and Reed didn't burn it either: in fact he published over 40 pages of the sketches in his book "Elgar As I Knew Him". And Elgar had also said to his doctor "If I can't complete the third symphony, somebody will complete it, or write a better one, in fifty or a hundred years." Thus began a long argument, carried on continuously over the last 60 years, as to whether the sketches should or should not ever be worked up into a completion.

In 1993, the composer and musicologist Anthony Payne was invited by the BBC to "put the sketches into some sort of shape for workshop performance". He had completed a version of both Scherzo and Adagio - the movements Elgar himself had most nearly finished - when the Elgar family, owners of the copyright, refused permission for the project to continue. However a BBC Radio 3 talk in March 1995 was permitted, which aroused much interest, and Payne soon believed he knew how Elgar had intended the first movement to be completed, too. Events now moved quickly and the family, realising that the sketches would soon be out of copyright protection altogether, decided to control the situation by commissioning a complete version of the symphony from Anthony Payne. And so, 65 years after commissioning it, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the first performance of Elgar's 3rd symphony in February 1998, where Payne received a standing ovation. The symphony has since been performed all over the UK, in Europe, and in New York, Chicago and Washington. Tonight's performance is the first in the East Midlands area.

All four movements are quite substantial, and the whole work lasts almost an hour.

The first movement is big, bold and powerful, with two main tunes presented - a powerful opening motto, grinding in bare fifths, and later a gentle and tender second theme. The exposition is repeated, and then both tunes are developed at some length, first separately and then together. The end of the movement, when it comes, seems quite abrupt and unexpected.

The allegretto scherzo is in Elgar's whimsical vein, and is quite lovely. The opening theme is a light dance - the use of the tambourine is clearly indicated by Elgar! A second section is more vigorous and threatens to become serious, but slips into a third theme, wistful and elusive. At the end the first theme reappears, but seems simply to evaporate.

The slow movement probes the darker emotions of grief, emptiness and aching nostalgia. It opens with a chromatic motto, immediately repeated by a solo viola. The harmonies are strange and groping, and a horn theme tries to emerge. After a tender interlude a second theme appears, but disappears into filigree tracery. The big climax that one expects, despite a bold attempt, never fully materialises, and the movement reverts to the mists from which it emerged. At the end the solo viola repeats the question it posed at the very beginning, but receives no answer.

The finale returns to the bold and heroic style of the first movement and, after a martial fanfare-like opening, offers three main themes: the first a swaggering march-like motto theme, the second characterised by a stalking bass line, and the third a broad sweeping melody, of the kind so often marked nobilmente in Elgar's scores. The final iteration of the first tune is particularly effective, building up to a big climax before it fades away, leaving the last word to a solitary tam-tam stroke.