Edward Elgar’s Cello Concert was his last major work for orchestra, and his most personal. In spite of fleeting moments of idyllic peacefulness, it is dominated by disillusionment, by a sense of suffering that at times cries out against life, yet more often speaks in quiet anguish.
Elgar had been ill, and he was deeply depressed by the First World War’s destruction he had known. All of this he poured into a concerto for the cello — not such an unlikely instrument, considering its rich-toned yet brooding personality and its searing, dark tones.
The four moments unfold from one another as if forming a single, rhapsodic thought — which, in view of Elgar’s masterful use of his thematic material, they actually do.
Here is a portion of this amazing work, with Daniel Barenboim conducting and Alisa Weilerstein, Cello soloist:
