Marcel Johannes KITS, cello / Estonia

Artūrs NOVIKS, accordion

Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra

Conductor Modestas PITRĖNAS

Programme:

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, symphonic poem In the Forest

Osvaldo Golijov, concerto for accordion, cello and orchestra Azul

César Franck, Symphony in D minor 

This year sees the 150^th birth anniversary of the composer, writer and photographer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, an iconic Lithuanian cultural figure, marked in his native country and worldwide. Inspired by this significant event, the programme of the Cello Cēsis Festival’s grand concert, staged in association with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Modestas Pitrėnas, showcases the creative potential of Lithuania, as well as the rest of the Baltic countries.

The programme features Čiurlionis’ symphonic poem ‘In the Forest’, a powerful musical landscape where the forest serves a symbol for life force, the mystery and unfathomable might of nature.

In a letter to his wife-to-be Sofija Kymantaitė, the composer wrote: ‘I would like to create a symphony from the murmur of waves, the rustling of centenary forest, the shimmering of the stars, our little songs and my unending longing.’

The centrepiece of the grand concert will be a performance of the Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov’s concerto for accordion, cello and orchestra ‘Azul’ (‘Blue’), a musical conversation between Marcel Johannes Kits, one of the most promising Estonian cellists of the younger generation, the Latvian accordionist Artūrs Noviks and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.

One of the most accomplished cello concerti in the history of contemporary music, ‘Azul’ was commissioned and first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2006 with the great Yo-Yo Ma playing the cello solo. The composer was inspired to write the piece after spending the summer in the Middle East in 2000, at a time that saw a new wave of violence engulf the region. ‘I just was struck by this incredible planet that we live on and how beautiful it is from above and how in a way with the topographical view, you don’t get that sense of all the struggles of life on the surface of our planet,’ Golijov says.

The concerto will be followed by César Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. Inspired by the music of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, the French composer created his opus seamlessly blending French and German musical traditions. This outstanding piece unequivocally sums up the oeuvre of César Franck and, with Camille Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, is widely seen as the most significant example of the late 1800s French symphonic music.