Description
Elgar’s final major work was his favourite and his most personal and candid. His confidence in the stability of home and friends was shaken by World War I and by the prospect of death and increasing age. But anxiety and loneliness prompted his most impassioned, powerful and poetic work, perhaps the greatest cello concerto in the repertoire, a powerful tour de force for soloist Jian Wang. Is it Elgar’s requiem for a dying Empire or for himself? Ten years earlier, Elgar had composed the concerto’s antithesis in the optimistic First Symphony. Radiating hope and glory, it was acclaimed as the greatest symphony of modern times.
Elgar
Cello Concerto
Symphony No.1