Three Britons

British music feels very close to home, but appearances can be deceptive. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in Victorian Holborn, yet his roots were in Sierra Leone. Michael Tippett’s Piano Concerto takes its cue from Beethoven, but it’s soon soaring free into a world of shimmering colours and visionary wonder: and no living pianist plays it with more brilliance than Steven Osborne. The magnificent tune that opens Elgar’s First Symphony, meanwhile, is just the gateway to something infinitely richer and more personal – a deeply emotional self-portrait of an artist on the edge. Edward Gardner drives straight to its heart.