BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Afternoon Performance – Elgar Symphony No.1
Programme
Béla Bartók
Hungarian Sketches, Sz 97
Robert Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor
Edward Elgar
Symphony No 1 in A flat major
Performers
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
Elisabeth Leonskaja piano
Thomas Dausgaard Conductor
Elgar wouldn’t say if his First Symphony told a story – merely that “it expressed a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future”. But the British public knew a masterpiece when they heard one, and when it was premiered in 1908, the audience leapt to its feet and cheered. Thomas Dausgaard brings a uniquely fresh approach to a late-Romantic epic like no other, paired here today with Bartók’s vivid musical postcards from Transylvania, and the poetry, tenderness and heart-on-sleeve romance of the Piano Concerto by Robert Schumann. There’s a good reason why pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja is revered by her fellow musicians: and you’re about to hear it.
The concert will be recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3.