Previewing Elgar
Here is my Iowa Public Radio interview with Jacqueline Hallbloom previewing tomorrow’s WCFSO performance of the Elgar concerto with cellist Zuill Bailey.
Interview with Jacqueline Hallbloom – mp3
Iowa Public Radio – October 2009
Cello, live and alive
On Saturday night the WCFSO will be joined by cellist Zuill Bailey for a performance of Edward Elgar’s stirring 1919 concerto. The piece’s performance history is dominated by English virtuoso Jacqueline du Pré, whose readings clearly lived up to to Elgar’s own characterization of the work as ‘alive’. [Du Pré was closely associated with the concerto from her first performances of it in 1962 until her retirement from playing a decade later due to symptoms from multiple sclerosis.] Here are the first two movements of the piece from a 1967 film by Christopher Nupen featuring du Pré with her husband Daniel Barenboim and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
