Barenboim Does Elgar With Another Woman
British composer Edward Elgar wrote his cello concerto in 1919 — soon after the end of World War I — and it’s suffused with the dark weight of that conflict. Thirty-year-old American cellist Alisa Weilerstein has a new recording of the piece, which she made with the Berlin Staatskapelle and conductor Daniel Barenboim. That in itself is noteworthy, because recordings by Barenboim’s late wife, cellist Jacqueline du Pre, became virtually synonymous with the Elgar concerto. For nearly four decades after du Pre’s untimely death, Barenboim didn’t perform the work with another female cellist. Now he has — with Weilerstein. She talks about the experience here.
