LDV42

And how do you see the Elgar Concerto? Who are your models? Of course, when I was young, I listened to Jacqueline du Pré’s record, and I heard her play the Concerto twice in Chicago. I was amazed by her charisma, and at the same time that wasn’t the way I heard the work in my head. I have tremendous admiration and respect for her conception, but I see, I understand the work throughanother prism.Maybe the prismof Casals: his recordinghad a great impact on me. It speaks to me, that concentration of sound, that intensity of expression, that absence of effect, that inwardness. He brings out the presence of death in the music.What’s more, he recorded it after a long periodwithout giving concerts, and I don’t think it was just by chance that he chose to do the Elgar withAdrian Boult: it was 1945, thework dated fromthe previousworldwar, and Casalsmust have found in the Elgar Concerto a sort of mirror for his own situation, his status as an exile. He could have chosen the Dvořák Concerto, but in his personal situation and with the historical consciousness he possessed, he chose Elgar. 30 BLOCH | ELGAR