Nikolaj Zainder performs Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the original violin

In 2010, Violinist Nikolaj Znaider performed Elgar’s Violin Concerto on the same 1741 violin in which Kriesler premiered the work on a hundred years before. Znaider was not worried about comparisons to Kriesler’s original performance:

“he way I think of music is that it really is something that is played in the moment – it’s not something you can repeat, it’s never the same experience. If nothing else, that’s because you’ve changed. When you approach music in this way – understanding its nature as something that can’t be repeated – you realise that the ghost of Kriesler is not just one thing. He played one night, then the next night he played it differently. Likewise, my own performance of Elgar’s Violin Concerto is not static.

Jeremy Pound, “First Violin”, BBC Music Magazine, October 2010, p. 36.

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