Elgar: Cello Concerto & Vaughan Williams: Dark Pastoral

Dai Miyata has been playing the cello since he was three years old and has won all competitions since the age of nine. He was also the first Japanese to win the first prize at the 9th Rostropovich Competition in 2009, thus finally climbing the Olympus of the international virtuoso world. In a current co-production with DENON, MDG presents the artist, who is still far too little known in this country, with a very special programme: Edward Elgar’s popular cello concerto meets the “Dark Pastoral”, which David Matthews has recreated from unfinished drafts by Ralph Vaughan Williams. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Elgar’s pupil, had left only sketches for a planned cello concert for the legendary Pablo Casals. Only the slow movement is available in a fair copy, which however breaks off abruptly. In collaboration with the RVW Foundation, David Matthews has turned it into a playable piece, which he called “Dark Pastoral” because of its elegiac character. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, under its principal conductor Thomas Dausgaard, perfectly strikes the tone of both works – audibly a stroke of luck for Dai Miyata and for British music.

Elgar: Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85

Vaughan Williams: Dark Pastoral for cello & orchestra