From Bach to Glass

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH – Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 (instrumentation by Leopold Stokowski, 1922)
PHILIP GLASS – Violin Concerto No. 1
SERGEI RACHMANINOV – Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44

Tonight Sergej Krylov, the artistic director and conductor of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, appears as a violin soloist with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. He has chosen a rather original contemporary opus – the First Violin Concerto by Philip Glass, an American minimalist who has Lithuanian roots and has recently frequented Lithuania. The work was composed with Glass’ father in mind, despite the latter’s death some sixteen years earlier: “I wrote the piece in 1987 thinking, let me write a piece that my father would have liked [...] A very smart nice man who had no education in music whatsoever, but the kind of person who fills up concert halls.” Eventually, the Violin Concerto became one of the most popular opuses of the American composer.

Tonight, the podium will be graced by conductor Vilmantas Kaliūnas. He will lead the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in an orchestral version of Johann Sebastian Bach’s refined Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor (arranged in 1922 by Leopold Stokowski, the legendary master of the baton) and the monumental Third Symphony by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninov. This is the latter’s penultimate work, which reveals the composer’s tragic talent.