A NEW Pomp and Circumstance March by Sir Edward Elgar is to receive its world premiere at the BBC Proms.

Its performance comes more than a hundred years after Land of Hope and Glory, the first Pomp and Circumstance March, became a favourite of the flag-waving Last Night of the Proms.

Elgar’s five military marches for symphony orchestra have a new addition, which will be heard for the first time on August 2. It was among several pieces that Elgar began in the early 1930s, towards the end of his life, but failed to finish. After the death of his wife, he lost the will to compose.

Anthony Payne, the composer who turned Elgar’s unfinished sketches for a Third Symphony into a performable work in 1998, found sketches in the archives of the British Library and the Royal School of Church Music, and completed the composition. They included a main tune and various ideas. Over one of them, Elgar had scribbled: “jolly good”.

The main melody needed only “tiny changes”, but Payne had to be more creative with the introduction and final flourish. The 69-year-old composer said that, as with the Third Symphony, this was “Elgar’s material and my working-out”.

Nicholas Kenyon, the BBC Proms director, said: “Anthony has drawn on his in-depth knowledge of Elgar’s style. Towards the end of his life Elgar started on quite a few projects but seems to have lost the will to compose.

“The piece will be about eight minutes in length. It hasn’t come out at all like the end of Hope and Glory. It’s not as exuberant, is more sombre and has a wistful quality. I thought it was extremely beautiful but quite surprising. There’s a touch of sadness in it; it does have an autumnal quality.”

With the Third Symphony, commissioned from the dying Elgar in 1933 at the behest of his friend George Bernard Shaw, Payne secured the blessing of the composer’s descendents, even though Elgar had asked that the sketches be destroyed.

Several Elgar scholars complained that it was unethical to finish the work. They included the late Wulstan Atkins, the composer’s godson, who eventually conceded that Payne’s version was “quite interesting”. Other members of the family hailed it a success, as did Andrew Davis, who will conduct Pomp and Circumstance No 6, which he described as “a fascinating new discovery”.

Ninety concerts will be staged from July 14 to September 9.

THE 2006 SEASON’S HIGHLIGHTS

• Sixty pieces by Mozart in more than 25 concerts
  
  
• American orchestras join top ensembles from around the world, in addition to European ensembles including the Berlin Philharmonic
  
  
• Shostakovich weekend led by Valery Gergiev
  
  
• Schumann: rare chance to hear the original version of his Fourth Symphony
  
  
• Proms debuts for the American mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez and the Cardiff Singer of the World 2005 Nicole Cabell
  
  
• Cosi fan tutte, semi-staged, based on this summer’s new Glyndebourne Festival production by Nicholas Hytner
  
  
• The Queen will attend a special 80th birthday concert

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