Sir Mark Elder              conductor
Stephen Hough            piano

Brahms                          Piano Concerto No. 1
Butterworth                 A Shropshire Lad
Elgar                              Enigma Variations

You don’t often hear concerts by two knights, but this starry Hallé performance unites Sir Mark Elder with Sir Stephen Hough for a concert that mirrors the preceding Philharmonia concert on 1 May. This time it’s Brahms’s more fractious First Piano Concerto that provides the first half of this performance. Bearing the imprint of Beethoven, whose heir he’d be proclaimed by his mentor Robert Schumann, the tempestuous opening of this expansive masterpiece also reflects the trauma of Schumann’s attempted suicide and his platonic love for Schumann’s wife, Clara.

Two emotive English classics complete the programme. Poignancy colours Butterworth’s heartfelt orchestral rhapsody, A Shropshire Lad, which, although written just before the First World War, seems to prefigure the national sense of loss, including his own untimely death. Elgar’s Enigma Variations embraces a much wider range of moods, transforming its ‘mystery’ theme into a vibrant portrait gallery of his friends, all brilliantly characterised by his unrivalled ear for orchestral colours. As you’d expect from Elgar, there’s great grandeur but also huge affection, not least in its magnificent centrepiece, Nimrod, arguably the most stirring sound to have emerged from these isles.