Nicola Benedetti

The great violinist Fritz Kreisler rated Edward Elgar alongside Beethoven and Brahms. When Kreisler said as much in a 1905 newspaper interview, Elgar picked up the threads of a concerto he’d begun nearly two decades earlier. The piece he finished five years later, performed in this concert by the exceptional Nicola Benedetti, is as epic and emotive as it is personal and elusive, ‘enshrining the soul’ of an unknown person. A more famous enigma is found in Elgar’s dazzlingly virtuosic set of variations for orchestra. His Enigma Variations are portraits of friends and celebrations of orchestral panache. But they also offer glimpses into the soul of an artist who might have been careful not to reveal his secrets but was never afraid to show his emotions.