Elgar’s Concerto and Enigma

Josef Suk: Dramatic Overture Op. 4 13 min.
Edward Elgar: Cello Concerto 30 min.
break 20 min.
Edward Elgar: Enigma, Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 31 min.

Axel Kober conductor
Julia Hagen cello 

German conductor Axel Kober has held chief conducting positions at the opera houses of Schwerin, Dortmund, Mannheim, Leipzig and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, and he also conducted at the Wagnerian Bayreuth Festival. However, to demonstrate his versatility, he will be bringing scores of Czech and British music to Prague. After Josef Suk’s Dramatic Overture, with which the future great composer and second student of the Czech Quartet completed his composition studies with Antonín Dvořák at the Prague Conservatory in 1892, two of Edward Elgar’s most famous compositions will be performed. A late-Romantic, self-taught composer, an outsider by definition, he lived mostly outside the metropolis, supported only by his wife’s faith in the power of talent. He eventually became famous for the Enigma Variations, whose heroic-melancholic style is based on musical characterisation, it is supposed to be a representation of friends. The first variation could be the composer’s wife, Alice, while the last fourteenth variation, the grand symphonic finale, could be the composer himself, already possessed of sufficient creative confidence. The Cello Concerto is certainly Elgar’s next most popular composition. It was created in 1919 in his summer cottage in Sussex, on the south coast of England, where the noise of the Great War could be heard from across the Channel at night during the previous year’s holidays. It has an intense depth and nostalgia, and certainly a sadness for war-torn Europe. It was not until the 1970s that the cellist Jacqueline du Pré revealed the hidden beauty of the piece to the public.

The concert is broadcast live by Czech Radio station Vltava.

Individual tickets: CZK 1,100 | CZK 900 | CZK 700 | CZK 500 | CZK 300 | CZK 180

Small subscription, 6 concerts: CZK 3,200 | CZK 2,800 | CZK 2,400 | CZK 2,000 | CZK 1,600

Large subscription, 12 concerts: CZK 4,500 | CZK 4,100 | CZK 3,700 | CZK 3,400 | CZK 2,100

The organiser reserves the right to change the list of scheduled performers.