Elgar’s Cello Concerto

Live at the BBC Proms: Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández in his Proms debut with Elgar’s concerto plus music by Webern and Walton from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra & Vasily Petrenko

Presented by Martin Handley, live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Anton Webern: Passacaglia
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor

c.8.15pm Interval
Musical polyglot Yshani Perinpanayagam some highlights in the coming week's Proms.

c.8.35pm
William Walton: Symphony No. 2

Pablo Ferrández (cello)
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Vasily Petrenko (conductor)

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.