Richard Pennycuick wrote:

>The other night I turned the radio on in mid-work and thought I'd
>identified it as one of the Tchaikovsky orchestral suites but the harmonies
>sounded wrong.  After a while, I recognised it as Elgar, a work I knew but
>not really well.  It was The Wand of Youth, which he wrote in mid-career.
>I know most of Elgar's orchestral music and can't think of any other work
>that sounds so much like Tchaikovsky.  I wondered whether it was done
>consciously.  Does anyone know more about The Wand of Youth?

I am no expert on Wand of Youth, but I'll tell you what I think I know.

Elgar wrote the piece around when he was working on his First Symphony.
It was based on tunes he wrote as a child, many of them for a children's
fantasy play he and his siblings were creating--hence the fantasy nature
of the music.  As a youth, Elgar compiled sketch books of these themes and
others that would occur to him.  He kept those books and consulted them
frequently during his adulthood.  It long was his intent to do something
with them in a single work, which he eventually did with Wand of Youth.

As for Tchaikovsky, Elgar obviously knew the music.  There is a story of
when he and two friends took turns playing the Pathetique as a piano duet.
Elgar came a cropper in the 5/4 movement, after which he reminded his
companion that he was a violinist not a pianist.  On violin he could play
this stuff.  It is said, though, that that 5/4 theme stayed with him, but
I don't see this in his Suites.  I know also of a time that Tchaikovsky's
Third Suite shared a program with Caractacus.  I think Elgar conducted his
own work--he certainly rehearsed it--but I don't know about the
Tchaikovsky.

It's my guess that the Tchaikovskian nature of the Wand of Youth is owed
more to the nature of the youthful themes than to Tchaikovsky directly, but
as I said he knew Tchaikovsky--though I don't know which pieces other than
the two mentioned--so who knows what may have entered into his mind.  (I
don't think Elgar heard Tchaikovsky as a child.)

Roger Hecht