At this concert, you might just solve a mystery. On 19 June 1899, Edward Elgar scored an unprecedented triumph with the world premiere of his Enigma Variations. The event was hailed as the rebirth of English music, which for two centuries — ever since the death of Henry Purcell — had played little role on the international stage. Only one thing puzzled listeners: what was the theme Elgar had actually varied in his masterpiece? The composer stubbornly refused to divulge it, and speculation ran wild. Was it the British national anthem? Rule, Britannia!? Or the folk tune Auld Lang Syne? To this day, no one has cracked the secret . . . Tchaikovsky, by contrast, left no questions unanswered with regard to his Fourth Symphony: he spelled out its program exactly. At its center stands “fate, the fateful power that thwarts our pursuit of happiness and endlessly poisons our soul.” But what music he wrote to portray it! Whether Tchaikovsky or Elgar, both composers are in the best of hands on this Festival evening, as the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko guarantee a romantic sound of the most sumptuous kind.
