Gut-wrenching Performance

By prefacing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Polonaise from his opera Eugene Onegin, the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Michael Sanderling — Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham, UK, 24 May 2018 — pointed up a link between the two, with the swaggering rhythms of the dance echoed (adapted to a different metre) in the Concerto's first movement. Somehow, in the background of the Polonaise, there was also a faint awareness of the opera's tragic denouement.

There's nothing tragic about the Violin Concerto, but this was an ear-opening experience in other respects...