CANCELLED: NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester / Alan Gilbert

»I’ve never seen anything as wonderful as the sun rising into the golden mist over our hills«, wrote Edward Elgar from his country house in Sussex in November 1918. But his private life towards the end of the First World War was anything but sunny. The composer wrote out the main theme of his Cello Concerto, for example, after a painful operation. And yet, someone listening to the first movement’s sweeping melody rising up from misty, overcast sounds into a full orchestral tutti may find himself reminded of the composer’s vivid description of an idyllic autumn landscape. The emotional ambivalence and depth of the last major work written by England’s national composer is without a doubt one reason why the Cello Concerto remains a firm repertoire favourite to this day.