Elgar’s practical know-how was coupled to a stroke of formal genius. The work is a theme and variations – one of the easiest musical forms to follow. But Elgar went a step further, and structured the Enigma Variations as a miniature symphony, with a first movement (I – VII), a slow movement (VIII – XIII) broken by a delicate intermezzo (Dorabella), and a stirring finale (XIV). Yet each variation is also a self-contained orchestral cameo; an affectionate sketch of one of Elgar’s network of friends and supporters. He was a seasoned miniaturist. Tone-painting came easily to the composer of Salut d’Amour and Chanson de Matin, and you don’t have to be a musicologist to enjoy the pictures of distant liners (***) and bulldogs (G.R.S.) – or to respond to the profound emotion of Nimrod.

Inspiration like this can’t be faked, and in writing about his friends and family, Elgar didn’t have to fake anything. The people – and places – he chose to portray in the Variations were those who had encouraged him through his troubled early years. The whole piece glows with a sense of genuine love – for friends, for family, for home. As for the “Enigma”? In his own words, “The Enigma I will not explain – its ‘dark saying’ must be left unguessed […] Further, through and over the whole set another and larger theme ‘goes’, but is not played”. That unplayed theme has inspired a thousand musical sleuths. Is it the counterpoint to another famous melody – perhaps Auld Lang Syne, or the National Anthem? Or an abstract concept, like friendship? Elgar’s only response to every suggestion was “No – nothing like it.”

We’re left with the music, and Elgar’s understated, endlessly evocative dedication: “To my friends pictured within”.