Unravelling the riddle of Elgar

Nicola Drake as Helen Weaver and Andrew Cochrane as Edward Elgar in Annie Goldson's documentary.

Elgar's Enigma, one of the successes of the Academy Cinema's recent World Cinema Showcase, plays on TV1's Artsville on Sunday and, says director Annie Goldson, will soon be available on DVD.

A film based around Elgar's Cello Concerto is an unexpected move for a woman best known for documentaries such as Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl and Sheilas: 28 Years On, and Goldson admits it.

"I've mostly worked in what would be called the human rights terrain, with subjects I'm drawn to or identify with in some way. Elgar was a challenge. At first, I wasn't drawn to him, given his politics and various associations, although now I find him intriguing - a working-class man, Catholic and Tory, who really suffered from discrimination."

The idea for the film came from Peter Walls, CEO of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Back in 2003, with Lynn Harrell playing Elgar's concerto with the orchestra, he suggested that Goldson film it.

The beautifully shot excerpts of the American cellist's performance are more than enough reason to see Goldson's film. She took immense care with its filming.

"We shot at the dress rehearsal and the performance, using three cameras," she explains, "so we had six options for each bit of audio and were able to get in close, using the dress rehearsal footage.

"We were careful because often television blunders about and puts hot lights at the top so the musicians get shiny noses and go out of tune. We bounced light from below the stage."

While this performance is one part of the film, the other is Brian Trowell's controversial theory that the concerto was inspired by 1916 death of Kenneth Munro. Munro was the son of Helen Weaver, a young Worcester woman to whom Elgar was engaged in the 1880s, an engagement broken off when she emigrated to New Zealand.

While Trowell puts forward his argument, Goldson has New Zealanders James Belich and Jock Phillips sketch in the social and historical context.

And Goldson isn't too worried if Trowell's version of events turns out to be speculation.

"It's only Brian's theory," she comments. "Whether it's true or not, the film evokes all sorts of things about the relationship between England and New Zealand at the time, as well as the redemptive power of music, not just with Elgar but with Helen. It's the whole evocation of that time."

Time is indeed poignantly evoked in archive clips from both New Zealand and abroad, including 1903 shots of Quay St from the harbour.

"It's a little later than it should have been," Goldson admits, "but I managed to edit the bits with cars out.

"I like the ephemeral details that are often in this footage, even if it's the kid biking along by the soldiers or some dog that comes in and out of the frame."

She wishes funding bodies were more aware of the problems in dealing with archives. "I scoured the archives of the world but working on a New Zealand budget is extremely hard especially if you are doing serious archival research. Apart from the monetary cost of the research and the rights to use footage, it just takes you so long."

Elgar's Enigma is a rich, provocative film and a brave undertaking; in the final count, as much trenchant anti-war statement as musicological proposal.

"I am part of the anti-war generation," Goldson reflects, "who, in rejecting war, also forgot to look at history. It was a good thing for me to go back and see what motivated all these young men to march off."

As with other Goldson films, there is no shortage of fascinating characters along the way. Take Trowell himself, elderly and unwell. "But as soon as I got him to look at the manuscript and read it," Goldson comments, "he responded so passionately."

You will meet American musicologist Byron Adams. "He has come up with this theory that after the Oscar Wilde trials there was a reinforcement of Protestant masculinism, reining back on excessive emotionalism. After all, Catholicism has always been seen as dangerously feminine because of its decorative aspects.

"Byron argues that Elgar reserved his most beautiful music and most passionate letters for his male friends and brings up the whole issue of the homosocial. Of course all the older scholars assume that Byron is saying that Elgar is gay, which is not the case."

It sounds like the sort of ploy that Ken Russell might have used when he was making his composer documentaries in the 1960s and 70s, and one of Goldson's coups was securing an interview with the English director.

"He was gorgeous," Goldson remembers. "We tracked him down in one of these little English thatched cottages, cute from the outside but I suspect not very comfortable to live in. Constantly having to duck through doorways. He dropped that cliche that I quite like - 'I don't know much about him but I liked his music'."

Who knows, on Sunday, Elgar's Enigma might encourage more than a few to get to know Elgar and one of his finest compositions.

* Elgar's Enigma, a film by Annie Goldson, Artsville TV1, Sunday 10.30pm