In this concert, death and passing are present even in a way that the composers never sayopenly. All three works were written in the last life period of their composers. Liszt's music has perhaps the most viral connection with mourning, but Elgar and Franck's music is also very melancholic an retrospective. It refers to earlier eras, genres, his own life story, and even former colleagues.
Franz Liszt's Funeral gondola (La lugubre gondola) was written when Liszt visited his old friend Wagner in the weeks before his death.
Edward Elgar's CelloConcerto was first performed in 1919, but the London premiere was such a failure that the composer almost completely abandones writing for the remaining 15 years. Audiences of the time thought of the work as old-fashioned and unnecessarily bitter.
