VIVA MUSICA VIA BALTICA

 

Concert Series

 

 

 

Viva Musica Via Baltica is an active platform for musical exchange, which focuses on the music and the art of musical performance thriving in the countries connected by the Via Baltica highway. The series of concerts presents the academic music cultures of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, as a result of collaboration between local concert institutions and their resident performers – four chamber orchestras and a male choir. Almost every concert programme was especially devised to give us a clue about the specific national sound of each participating country; to demonstrate high level of artistic excellence in performing the standard Western music repertoire; and to showcase old and new works by Lithuanian composers.

 

Among the household names of each participating country to be presented in the series are three Estonian composers, associated with the so-called ‘sacred’ or ‘mystical’ minimalism – Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis and Toivo Tulev; the typical representative of the ‘Young Poland’ movement in music at the turn of the 20th century – composer Mieczysław Karłowicz; two very different Finnish composers: Kaija Saariaho, regarded as the foremost Finnish female composer and the representative of the spectral music scene, and Aulis Sallinen, renowned for his moderate modernist idiom; and, finally, Ēriks Ešenvalds, a much promising and versatile composer of the young generation of Latvian composers. The most distinctive woks by Vytautas Laurušas, Algirdas Martinaitis and Ugnė Giedraitytė, written in different periods and for various occasions, as well as new pieces by Osvaldas Balakauskas and Justė Janulytė, will add a Lithuanian scent to these programmes.

 

Viva Musica Via Baltica project is not only about the composers, but also about the art of performance, specific details of intonation and musical articulation characteristic of each country. Among the performers participating in the series are two mature musical groups – the internationally acclaimed Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and the Estonian National Male Choir known as the largest full-time professional male choral group in the world; two youthful chamber orchestras that show great growth potential, juvenile enthusiasm and no wish to tread the beaten tracks – Sinfonia Iuventus from Poland and Sinfonietta Rīga from Latvia; and the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra that has recently entered into a new phase of its development with the new artistic director in the person of cellist Mindaugas Bačkus. The series also features a remarkable line-up of soloists and conductors: accomplished Lithuanian master of the baton Robertas Šervenikas, young talented Estonian conductor Risto Joost; and three young virtuosi – violinist Julian Rachlin, pianist Daumantas Kirilauskas and cellist Mindaugas Bačkus.

 

Venue:

Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall (Aušros Vartų g. 5)

 

Organiser:

Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society

Back