Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with Mark Wigglesworth

Brahms’ highly revealing musical self-portrait bookends this programme with the musical caricatures within Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

From the beginning, Brahms’ Third Symphony has proven to be his most evocative – a compelling piece rich with references to his own thoughts about life and love in its striking mixture of passion and pessimism, of restlessness and serenity. With numerous acknowledgments to Wagner and allusions to the same Rhine-based mythology, it provides other fascinations as well.

The spirit of Brahms infuses Stephen Hough’s Piano Concerto. The title refers to Stefan Zweig’s memoir of his cultural life in Vienna before the First World War and evokes nostalgia for a bygone era when piano concertos were a touring composer-pianist’s calling card. It bridges time, weaving together echoes of the past with virtuosic brilliance.

The Variations on an Original Theme is a brilliantly varied portrait gallery of Elgar’s friends, family and neighbours. The musical caricatures contain some of the most charming and deeply felt music Elgar ever penned and these are elaborated upon on this unique performance with Elgar’s descriptions here narrated by an actor.