A cello sobs, an orchestra erupts — this concert will wreck you beautifully.
Argentinian cellist Sol Gabetta made her Philharmoniker debut at the 2014 Easter Festival in Baden-Baden with Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the final great work of the composer. The orchestra and conductor also performed the prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin, György Ligeti’s orchestral piece Atmosphères and Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, a work which is entirely focused on the future and pushes the boundaries of classical music in terms of sound, rhythm and energy.
Acting
Gabetta's Elgar — technically perfect, emotionally demolished.
Direction
Rattle conducts Stravinsky like it's still dangerous.
Sound
Berlin Phil's Atmosphères — orchestral texture as pure abstraction.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Elgar composed his Cello Concerto in 1919 after a tonsillectomy gone wrong and the devastation of WWI — he never wrote another major work.
Ligeti's Atmosphères famously contains no melodic material whatsoever — just pure texture and timbre, which Kubrick later stole for 2001's 'Monolith' scenes.
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