A long-time collaborator with the LSO as a soloist, and lately as conductor, Nikolaj Znaider views the Beethoven Violin Concerto as the violin repertoire’s ‘bible’.

The only example of a concerto for an instrument other than piano, the piece reflects the lyrical side of Beethoven’s work; a serene, good-natured piece in which no sense of his struggle with the onset of deafness appears. Elgar’s Second Symphony is mellow yet inventive, with rather a mood of conflict, perhaps reflecting the mounting tensions that culminated in World War I three years later.