Fourteen variations on an original theme: it seems easy, boring, even – but the great mastery of Edward Elgar turned it into one of the most famous works of the British repertoire.

An evening spent at the piano and the musical ear of his wife (who asked him to repeat a specific melody): that’s all Elgar needed to compose his ‘Enigma Variations‘. What began as a simple movement grew, as he improvised, into a theme as well as the first variation in which Elgar depicted his friend Billy Baker. This ‘joke’ ultimately led to 14 musical portraits of Elgar’s entire circle of friends.