Concert Programme
A. Dvořák. Cello Concerto, b-moll, Op. 104
R. Wagner. Symphonic Suite "The Ring Without Words" (arranged by Lorin Maazel)
Daniel Müller-Schott is one of the most prominent and highly acclaimed cellists of our time. For many years, he has served as an ambassador for classical music, collaborating with the world's leading orchestras and conductors, and building bridges between music, literature, and the visual arts. The American daily The New York Times highlights Müller-Schott's "intense expressiveness" and praises him for his "fearless playing and exceptional technique." The cellist is a regular guest with the world's most renowned orchestras, having performed with the New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berlin, London, and Oslo Philharmonics, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Sydney and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, the Tokyo NHK Symphony Orchestra, and many others.
The artist's repertoire spans different musical eras, from the Baroque to the contemporary. His creative curiosity is reflected in his continuous search for new works, his own arrangements, and his musical dialogue with contemporary composers. Over a career spanning more than thirty years, Müller-Schott has brought to life the music of J. S. Bach, W. A. Mozart, L. van Beethoven, J. Brahms, and many other illustrious composers, with his recordings earning numerous awards.
In Vilnius, Müller-Schott will perform Antonín Dvořák's (1841–1904) Cello Concerto in B minor. For a long time, despite repeated requests to write a cello concerto, Dvořák repeatedly declined, believing that the instrument was better suited for chamber music. However, the composer eventually took the leap—and he was not mistaken. The Cello Concerto in B minor went on to become one of the most towering masterpieces of the cello repertoire worldwide.
In the second half of the concert, the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its artistic director and chief conductor Gintaras Rinkevičius, will perform the essence of Richard Wagner's (1813–1883) titanic operatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung—the symphonic suite The Ring Without Words (Der Ring ohne Worte), arranged in 1987 by the American conductor Lorin Maazel. The structure of the suite strictly follows the chronology of musical events in Wagner's cycle, from the prelude to Das Rheingold to the final chords of Götterdämmerung. Famous symphonic pictures such as "The Ride of the Valkyries", "Siegfried's Rhine Journey", and Siegfried's Funeral March are seamlessly woven into the continuous flow of musical action. Wagner's dense, colorful, endlessly shifting, and inventive symphonic language is like an ocean, in whose depths all emotions, feelings, soul movements, and motives driving the operatic characters are born. Observing the currents, storms, and stillness of this ocean is a journey that becomes a profoundly meaningful experience in itself.