Peter Maxwell Davies, Britten, Elgar: Barbican Hall

This concert is the latest in a city-wide sweep of prolific Maxim Vengerov appearances following the violinist’s return from injury in 2012. Considered by many to be the most talented violinist in the world, Vengerov’s spectacular talents are here exhibited beside those of a triumverate of formidable English forces: conductor Sir Antonio Pappano, the London Symphony Orchestra, and composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, whose Symphony No. 10 receives its long awaited world première.

It will be exciting to see Pappano’s muscular conducting lend itself to a distinctly English concert programme. Maxwell Davies’s world première is preceded by Elgar’s  In The South (Alassio), Op. 50 and Britten’s Violin Concerto - whose virtuosic solo role will of course be taken by Vengerov. 

Britten’s elegiac concerto is a relatively early work, and saw its completion in 1939, not long after the composer visited Barcelona with violinist Antonio Brosa. It was Brosa who would go on to première the work in New York the following year. 

While Spanish themes are not particularly decipherable in the score, it is known that Britten wrote the piece as a response to the volatile political climate in Spain at the time. One certainly gets a sense of angst and urgency in the concerto which is at times fraught and frenetic and at times deeply contemplative. We particularly look forward to seeing Vengerov sink his teeth into the herculean cadenza that concludes the second movement.

The concert will be dominated, of course, by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s world première. Though he began his career as an enfant terrible of the British New Music scene alongside Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Alexander Goehr, Davies’s style has mellowed somewhat over the years, and his later symphonies are arguably more akin to the orchestral works of Nielsen or Sibelius than they are to anything currently being written on these shores. If his last couple of symphonies are anything to go by, then there is no doubt that Davies’s tenth symphony will be an enormous experience. 

This concert is also preceded by a study day, which includes access to an earlier rehearsal, a talk from a guest speaker, and the performances of various chamber works by LSO players, so if you have a day off, get booking!