Alisa Weilerstein Plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto

Rafael Payare, conductor
Alisa Weilerstein, cello

ELGAR: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85
BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique, Op. 14

This concert pairs two masterpieces written at opposite ends of their composers’ careers: Elgar’s elegiac Cello Concerto and Berlioz’s audacious Symphonie fantastique.

Edward Elgar’s concerto, composed in 1919 as the shadow of World War I lifted, stands as his final great work. Gone is the imperial grandeur of his earlier music; in its place is intimacy and reflection. Written in the quiet of the English countryside – where distant gunfire from France was still faintly audible – the concerto mourns loss yet affirms the power of music to heal. Today, it remains one of the most beloved works in the cello repertoire, and Alisa Weilerstein continues its long tradition of great interpreters.

Nearly a century earlier, a fearless young Hector Berlioz shocked Paris with his Symphonie fantastique (1830). This revolutionary work broke every rule of symphonic form, telling the feverish, semi autobiographical tale of a tormented artist haunted by love, opium dreams, and visions of his own execution and demonic revels. With astonishing imagination and orchestral innovation, Berlioz expanded the possibilities of musical storytelling.

Together, these two works rise from personal passion – one inward and elegiac, the other wild and visionary – revealing music’s ability to express both the deepest grief and the most fantastic imagination.