Elgar Symphony No. 1 with Alexander Soddy

String radiance, Mozartian drama and Elgarian nobility shape this richly contrasted afternoon.

Alexander Soddy opens with Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, music that seems to suspend time as divided strings unfold in luminous, spacious textures. Piotr Anderszewski is the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24, one of the composer’s darkest and most searching concertos, where elegance and turbulence are held in perfect balance.

The second half belongs to Elgar’s Symphony No. 1, a work of deep feeling. Its famous opening motto returns transformed over the course of a score that moves from introspection to blazing affirmation. Soddy returns to the Philharmonia for the first time since a remarkable performance of Bruckner’s Sixth in 2023, praised by Opera Today for its “palatial beauty”. Heard together, these three masterpieces create an afternoon of reflection, drama and release.

Alexander Soddy – conductor · Piotr Anderszewski – piano

Programme: Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis · Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491 · Elgar: Symphony No. 1