Alda Dizdari is as brilliant and exotic as her name suggests. Now she has recorded the Elgar violin concerto in Moscow with conductor Alexander Walker and the Musica Viva Orchestra. The recording will be released on SACD as well as vinyl, and will be coupled with an audiobook where Alda reads her acclaimed autobiography “Kiss Me Again, a Memoir of Elgar in Unusual Places”. Here she relates her coincidental discovery and love of Elgar as she played his works while rediscovering her childhood places. A feature depicting Alda’s life and book was the subject in the Sunday Times Culture supplement in October 2018.

Born into a highly educated and musical family in Albania, Alda’s talent as a violinist was recognised and nurtured at the early age of 5. Her parents realised that Albania was not a country where her talents could develop; so they sent her to school in Romania both for her school education and to continue her violin studies at the George Enescu High School and the University of Bucharest which had one of the best reputations in Europe and has produced some of the worlds finest musicians.

After her rigorous and demanding musical education in Romania, Alda went to continue her violin studies in Illinois in the USA, and although she later won a scholarship to the Julliard School in New York, she was advised to continue her post graduate studies with David Takeno in the UK at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She was soon made a Fellow there, also winning the prestigious Leaverhulme Scholarship Alda has recorded 3 CDs, one of which is a live recording from the Wigmore Hall, and includes some of the most virtuoso pieces of the violin repertoire including Bartok, Enescu, Janacek and Brahms and which received rave reviews as well as ‘One to watch’ in the Gramophone Magazine. She is featured in a DVD of the Sibelius violin concerto with the Albanian Symphony Orchestra, filmed in Canterbury Cathedral.

She now juggles her busy life, with regular concert performances and her teaching. She led the Allegri String Quartet, one of the oldest quartets in the country, and went on to teach at the Purcell School. Alda has a particular interest in helping young people from a disadvantaged background to learn a musical instrument. Subsequently England has become her home and she has worked hard to earn her position as one of the most dedicated performers and teachers in the UK. The story of Alda and her passion for Elgar’s violin concerto is a remarkable one, and her heartfelt account of her journey playing the concerto through Albania and Romania is vividly depicted in her autobio- graphical book, “Kiss Me Again, a Memoir of Elgar in Unusual Places”, which was released last year, and was received very enthusiastically by the press.

Alda’s passion for Elgar realised her dream to perform a work very close to her heart in countries not familiar with Elgar, and certainly not played with such passion and commitment by an Albanian! Her book conjures up an atmosphere of times past, and certainly makes you want to visit.