Review for Elgar Cello Concerto-16th Feb 2005-Festival Hall with LPO and Berglund
The Guardian Friday 18th February 2005 - Tom Service
The final moments of cellist Peter Wispelwey's performance of Elgar's Cello Concerto, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Paavo Berglund, provided a shattering climax. After a last vision of lyricism and warmth, the music plunged into the depths of despair, returning to the desperate, minor-key chords of the opening of the piece. This passage was made all the more moving thanks to the intensity of Wispelwey's playing of the rest of the concerto. Instead of a world-weary melancholy, his performance was full of energy and insight. He gave the scherzo a flamboyant, fizzing fantasy, a dazzling display of technique that dissipated in the song of the slow movement. But it was the outer movements that were most revelatory: the first, with its endless, circling melody, was not simply a wallowing in musical nostalgia, but a vivid, heart-rending lament, and the fast music of the finale was a frantic railing against the dying of the light. Instead of sounding like Elgar's musical farewell, the concerto seemed, in Wispelwey's hands, brilliantly original: a piece of shocking concision and power.