Dresdner Musikfestspiele: British Orchestra Sensation I — Benedetti, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Gardner

About the Event

Everything about the first of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's two guest performances at the Kulturpalast is quintessentially British: the renowned English orchestra and its principal conductor Edward Gardner are bringing Nicola Benedetti to Dresden, one of the most sought‐after violinists and influential artists of the present day from the United Kingdom. The program also comes from the island: the late Romantic composer Edward Elgar, considered the greatest English composer after Henry Purcell, who died in 1695, wrote his violin concerto at the suggestion of Fritz Kreisler, who is said to have looked at the draft score and said, “With this, I will make Queen's Hall tremble.” Elgar's First Symphony, premiered two years earlier in Manchester by the Hallé Orchestra under the baton of Hans Richter, to whom it was dedicated, was received with equal euphoria by the audience and described in the press as “the finest thing ever put on paper by an English composer.”