Barenboim and the Staatskapelle: Elgar and Tchaikovsky

If you're looking for top-class classical music concerts in London, look no further. Daniel Barenboim is an intellectual and a showman, both a devotee of the aesthetic power of music and its ability to affect the world. There can have been few conductors who constantly play their part with a sense of sheer delight, thrilled by the possibilities of their work. The Barenboim Project, running for three months at the Southbank Centre, is a rare chance for Londoners to experience the breadth and depth of the great artist’s vision. And his performance on the 21^st April, backed by the Berlin Staatskapelle, promises to be a highlight. Book soon – the orchestra’s Beethoven and Strauss performance in the same week has already soon out, and tickets for this one are diminishing quickly.
Barenboim will conduct the orchestra – of which he has been director since 1992 – in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto (1878) and Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 (1911). The first of these pieces may well be the most popular ever composed. A virtuosic violin part, encompass both wild technical thrills and sumptuously lyrical melodies, soars amidst orchestration as measured as it is grandiose. Lisa Batiashvili, an award-winning player of rare elegance, takes the soloist’s part.
Dismiss Elgar at your peril. Although often lambasted as the composer of bombastic patriotic marches, his finest work shows a first-rate musical mind. And his Symphony No. 2 is one of his very best. This is a piece is astonishing radiance, suffused with a golden glow, the high romanticism of Wagner matched with the graceful, dream-like flow of Debussy. There can be few better reflections of the declining Edwardian summer. An intimately affecting first movement gives way to a mystically elegiac funeral march, an impassioned rondo and a shimmering finale. It has often been described as a masterpiece of warmth and consolidation, though it is much more than that – a pilgrimage of the soul, an exploration of inner and outer works and a tribute to Elgar’s lost friends. And, as Barenboim’s 2014 recording with the Staatskapelle won raft of five star reviews, this is certain to be a landmark performance.