BBC SSO 2015-16 Season Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations'

Some of the finest music of the 20th century died in the mud of the Western Front. We’ll never know what music George Butterworth and Cecil Coles might have written – but in the month in which the nation remembers, Martyn Brabbins conducts the first performances of two works they almost completed; each charged with a unique emotional power. Two established British favourites offer a contrasting vision of what might have been: Elgar’s warm-hearted musical portrait album of his “friends pictured within”, and Walton’s sun-kissed Mediterranean daydream of a Cello Concerto, performed tonight by the exceptional young German virtuoso Nicolas Altstaedt.

Prelude: 6.45pm in the Recital Room
Kate Kennedy, author of The First World War: literature, music, memory introduces the concert.

Post-concert Coda
(approximately 10 minutes after the main concert)
Nicolas Altstaedt performs Britten’s Cello Suite No.3.