16 May 2019, 7pm
Duration: 2 hours
Price: €7,00 - €30,00
Venue: Vilnius Congress Hall (Vilniaus Str. 6-1, Vilnius)
Mezzo-soprano Justina Gringytė
Choir Kaunas State Choir (Artistic Director and Conductor Petras Bingelis)
Choir Ąžuoliukas Boys' and Youth Choir (Artistic Director Vytautas Miškinis)
Orchestra Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Gintaras Rinkevičius

CONCERT PROGRAMME

Gustav Mahler. Symphony No. 3 in D minor

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The Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra led by maestro Gintaras Rinkevičius closes its 30th Anniversary season with an impressive opus by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), Symphony No. 3. It is not accidental that this particular work has been chosen for the special occasion. According to musicologist Jūratė Katinaitė, "maestro Gintaras Rinkevičius is the first Lithuanian Mahler expert, who starts the history of reception of Gustav Mahler's legacy in Lithuania." Over the years, Mahler's music has become an integral part of the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra's repertoire. Conducted by Gintaras Rinkevičius, the orchestra has recodrded almost all symphonic works by Gustav Mahler.

Gustav Mahler spent the summer of 1893 in Steinbach on the Attersee, a mountain village in Austria. That year he became "a summer composer"; he spent the long summer days in the countryside, where he could compose undisturbed, and then returned to the hectic life of a conductor during the season in the city. It was there, right on the shore of the lake, surrounded by mountains and meadows, where Mahler wrote his Third Symphony devoted to the subject of man and nature. "No need to look at the landscape. I have composed all this already," said Mahler to his close friend Bruno Walter, a legendary German conductor, who had come to visit him. Then Mahler played through the score of the Third Symphony at the piano, and Walter later wrote: "His whole being seemed to breathe a mysterious affinity with the forces of nature. I saw him as the God Pan."

The conceptual essence of the symphony is perfectly revealed in the programmatic titles of the six movements: "Pan Awakes; Summer Marches In", "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me", "What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me", "What Man Tells Me", "What the Angels Tell Me" and "What Love Tells Me". Drawing from a collection of German folk poems Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Friedrich Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, the symphony scored great success from the very day of its premiere. It was voted one of the ten greatest symphonies of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine.