Enigma Variations: Music with secret and cryptic messages

This playlist, named after Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, presents works characterised by hidden messages or secret ideas. Whether it is Alban Berg retelling the story of an affair, Robert Schumann paying homage to his “distant beloved” or Dmitri Shostakovich capturing Stalin’s brutality in sound, it is instrumental music that in each case allows the composer to express and hide secrets at the same time.