Reviews in the following year, however, were decidedly mixed. Elgar conducted the Hallé Orchestra in a performance on 23 November 1911 eliciting the critic of "The Manchester Guardian" to declare "Elgar's original charm and his power of surprising us into wonder have diminished rather than grown as his craftsmanship and subtlety of fantastic variation have increased ... we can hardly say that the work contains any melody in the full sense of the word. Neither can we say with confidence that it quite vanquishes the impression of coldness and hardness." The American premiere in Cincinnati on 24 and 25 November by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski was not well received, and the American correspondent of "The Times" had this to say of a New York performance on 16 December: "One cannot listen to even the most eloquent pleading for nearly an hour without fatigue, and that was the first impression this music made – of restless, unpitying earnestness...not only is no concession made to the sensuously pleasing, but little regard is paid to the psychological need for contrast, for relief. It is a devotee exhorting a congregation assumed also to be devotees."