Elgar’s Enigma Variations by Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Bliss, A., -tól (2025/2025), Karmester Martyn Brabbins, Cadogan Hall, London, United Kingdom

Elgar’s Enigma Variations began as a parlour game, a series of musical portraits of the composer’s nearest and dearest. It grew into the warmest, tenderest and most stirring masterpiece in all of British music: who isn’t moved by the profound emotion of Nimrod? Few artists understand British music better than former English National Opera music director Martyn Brabbins, and tonight Enigma crowns an all-British programme that opens with the serenity of Vaughan Williams and stars another great champion of British music, pianist Mark Bebbington, in the Piano Concerto by Sir Arthur Bliss. It’s not heard all that often, but it’s an absolute knockout: an art deco blockbuster, written on the eve of the Second World War. The greatest piano concerto you’ve never heard? Judge for yourself…