Two outstanding young talents unite for this dramatic programme. The Â鶹ԼÅÄ Philharmonic’s former Principal Guest Conductor opens proceedings with Dukas’s cautionary musical tale of the hapless would-be sorcerer whose misuse of magic leads to a domestic tsunami. American cellist Zlatomir Fung has the world at his feet since he won the Gold Medal at last year’s International Tchaikovsky Competition, the youngest competitor to do so in the cello category. For his first visit to Nottingham he brings Elgar’s autumnal Cello Concerto, a poignant farewell to a world blown apart by the First World War.
A different kind of emotional energy drives William Walton’s First Symphony, which reflects the turbulent episodes in his life during its creation. His intense relationships with two women – Imma von Doernberg and Alice Wimborne – define its edge-of-the-seat emotions, from the ratcheting tension of the searing first movement, to the hand-wringing of its fraught slow movement, marked ‘con malinconia’. Finally, in an abrupt shift of mood, Walton ends the symphony with fanfares and an upbeat fugue, revelling in the heraldic brilliance of his greatest ceremonial and film music.
