Very British, and the finest of its kind, is everything at the first of the two guest performances of the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Kulturpalast: The English orchestra, counted among the very greats, and its chief conductor Edward Gardner bring Nicola Benedetti, not only one of the most sought-after violinists and influential artists of the present from the United Kingdom, to Dresden. The program also comes from the island: The late Romantic Edward Elgar, who is considered the greatest English composer after Henry Purcell, who died in 1695, wrote his violin concerto at the suggestion of Fritz Kreisler, who is said to have exclaimed upon looking at the score draft: "With this, I will make the Queen's Hall tremble." Equally euphoric was Elgar's First Symphony, premiered two years earlier in Manchester by the Hallé Orchestra under the direction of the dedicatee Hans Richter, which was received by the audience, with the press saying it was "the noblest work ever put on paper by an English composer."
Nicola Benedetti Violin
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Edward Gardner Conductor
Edward Elgar Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in B minor op. 61 and Symphony No. 1 in A-flat major op. 55