Andrew Mellor attends the performance of Elgar, Turnage and Stravinsky at Copenhagen’s DR Concert Hall on 5 February 2026
Henrik Dam Thomsen’s recording of Bach’s Cello Suites was nominated for an ICMA Award in 2025. In this concert the Danish cellist stepped out from within the ranks of his own orchestra for a performance of Elgar’s Cello Concerto that could put you in mind of Bach. His playing was exceptionally clean, notwithstanding some slips in intonation, and almost entirely free from histrionics.
These ingredients made for a less impassioned but not necessarily less moving account of the piece, one that was absorbing in its purity and concentration. The lightness of his playing refreshed the concerto’s Allegro molto and Allegro ma non troppo sections.
If some might have considered Thomsen’s Elgar too cool-headed, the cellist might have been thinking about what surrounded it. To open, Alondra de la Parra conducted the world premiere of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen Suite (derived from his 2025 opera) – as riotous, groovy and pugilistic as would be expected.
Thomsen generously referenced Turnage’s presence in his encore, a poised performance of the composer’s Milo for solo cello. After the interval came The Rite of Spring, the DNSO on blistering form but playing with deep sensitivity to colour too. If there’s a conductor who brings this piece to life with more rhythmic profile and panache than de la Parra, I am yet to come across them.
Andrew Mellor
Review: Henrik Dam Thomsen: Bach
Read: A Treasury of Sound
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