Proms 2026 Elgar’s Cello Concerto

Le Figaro called him a ‘new cello genius’. Now prize-winning Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández makes his Proms debut with Elgar’s achingly passionate concerto. He joins Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for a programme that measures out the griefs, conflicts and shifting identities of the 20th century – opening with Webern’s lushly Romantic 1908 Passacaglia, whose sequence of intricate variations finds a ghostly echo in the finale of Walton’s Second Symphony. Premiered in 1960, the latter work looks back rather than forwards, rejecting the avant-garde in favour of a dense, Expressionistic intensity.

Pablo Ferrández © Mario Wurzburger