London Philharmonic Orchestra | Romance and Rapture

Berlioz Overture, Le Corsaire
Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Elgar Symphony No. 2

Vasily Petrenko conductor
Kirill Gerstein piano

Twenty-two years before Rachmaninoff created the rapturous and devious dance for piano and orchestra that is the Paganini Rhapsody, Edward Elgar wrote a symphony that was intended to represent ‘high and pure joy’. The Second Symphony certainly appeared high-spirited, bubbling over with energy and expression. But it was far more emotionally complicated than Elgar had suggested – as much a battleground for conflicting feelings and instincts as the great Romantic scores of central Europe, enshrined in instrumental opulence the likes of which England had never heard before.