Nimrod (Enigma Variations, Op. 36, No. 9)

Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. He was appointed Master of the King's Musick in 1924. Although he is often regarded as a typically English composer, most of his musical influences were not from England but from continental Europe. He felt himself to be an outsider, not only musically, but socially. In musical circles dominated by academics, he was a self-taught composer; in Protestant Britain, his Roman Catholicism was regarded with suspicion in some quarters; and in the class-conscious society of Victorian and Edwardian Britain. In his fifties, Elgar composed a symphony and a violin concerto that were immensely successful. His music came, in his later years, to be seen as appealing chiefly to British audiences.

The superb transcription was done by William H. Harris (1883-1973) who was organist of several New College,Oxford, Christchurch Oxford, and finally of St. George's, Windsor.