Simone Young by Elgar, Bartók, Från (2023/2023), Dirigent Simone Young, Victoria Hall, Genève, Schweiz

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto entered the world stage in 1965 thanks to Jacqueline du Pré's exalted and romantic interpretation. The work dates from 1919, following the English composer's long silence during the war. Contemplative and elegiac, his last important work shines with the twilight of a language that will die with him. His music may have fallen out of fashion, but has come back with a vengeance thanks to a new generation of performers who have been able to detect its grandeur and nobility. Béla Bartok's masterful Concerto for Orchestra is also a work of the end of his life, at a time when the great Hungarian composer was dying of illness and misery in his American exile. Commissioned by friends who wanted to help him, the work quickly became popular thanks to its extraordinary blend of virtuosity and Hungarian popular influences magnified by an immediately understandable style. In 1956, at the dawn of stereophony, the OSR made a recording that caused a sensation.