Karen Cargill Sings Elgar by Elgar, Tippett, Od (2017/2017), Dirigent Martyn Brabbins, City Halls, Glasgow, United Kingdom

In a restless and angry world, music battles to make itself heard. And then, from amidst the turmoil and strife, a woman’s voice breaks through – singing not a hymn to joy, but a heartfelt and sorrowful blues. Michael Tippett had the idea for his Third Symphony while at the Edinburgh International Festival; written during the ‘Summer of Love’, it’s a masterpiece with an urgent message for the 21st century. And it’s a wonderfully appropriate counterpart to Elgar’s Sea Pictures. Songs of beauty, longing and despair from a composer who was anything but a stiff old Edwardian gent, sung here by the great Scottish mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill.