/performances/26-27/cso/rachmaninov-piano-concerto-no-2/

With his “poetic and masterly” approach (The Guardian), British pianist Benjamin Grosvenor embraces both the romance and the danger of Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto — from the stormy first movement to its beast of a finale. It sets the stage for Elgar’s First Symphony, “arguably the finest symphony ever written by a British composer,” according to BBC Music Magazine. This is not the stiff-upper-lip Elgar of Edwardian marches, but a deeply personal work full of splendor, melancholy and restless passion.