Alban Gerhardt performs Elgar with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

When it comes to bringing the music of his compatriots Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams to life, British conductor Andrew Manze is an acknowledged expert. Alban Gerhardt will perform the solo part in Edward Elgar’s compelling Cello Concerto; he first appeared with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2009. 

Here in Amsterdam, Vaughan William’s Fifth Symphony is relatively unfamiliar, but the work has always been popular with the British. The composer wrote it to offer his compatriots hopeful visions of a world at peace during the Second World War. The symphony harks back to a pleasing, pastoral style, not unlike Vaughan William’s earlier Fantasia on a theme of the sixteenth-century English master composer, Thomas Tallis. That work for double string orchestra was inspired by the cathedral of Gloucester, where it premiered. In the Main Hall of the Concertgebouw, the piece’s spatial effects really come to life!