9 November 2023, 7pm
Duration: 2 hours
Price: €14,00 - €29,00
Venue: Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall (Aušros Vartų Str. 5, Vilnius)
Violin Vadim Gluzman
Orchestra Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra
Conductor Gintaras Rinkevičius

CONCERT PROGRAMME

K. Szymanowski. Violin Concerto No. 2, op. 61
A. Bruckner. Symphony No. 9 in D minor

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Acclaimed by critics as one of today's most prominent performers, violin virtuoso Vadim Gluzman breathes new life and passion into the golden era of the 19-20th centuries’ violin tradition. Born in Ukraine, the artist spent most of his childhood in Riga, where he began learning to play the violin at the age of seven. After moving to Israel with his parents, V. Gluzman continued his studies with the famous violin professor Yair Kless, and then with the legendary Isaac Stern, who became one of V. Gluzman's most important teachers and mentors. This was followed by studies in the USA, at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, and worldwide fame – as soon as he turned 21, V. Gluzman started performing all over the world. The wide repertoire of the violin virtuoso flourishes together with the Berlin Philharmonic, Boston, Paris, Chicago, Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw, Leipzig Gewandhaus and other world-famous symphony orchestras. The artist's recordings have won numerous awards, including Diapason d'Or, Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, Classica Magazine, Classic FM, The Strad and others. V. Gluzman is playing a Stradivarius violin, produced by the legendary Hungarian violinist Leopold Auer in 1690.

Tonight, V. Gluzman will perform Karol Szymanowski’s (1882-1937) Violin Concerto No. 2, written in 1933 as a commission by violin virtuoso Paweł Kochański. Seemingly simple, concise themes in the work turn into a rich narrative, surprising with changes in the colors of its music. K. Szymanowski's Second violin concerto became one of the last and best appreciated works of the composer.

In the second part of the concert, the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra conducted by maestro Gintaras Rinkevičius, will continue Anton Bruckner's (1824–1896) cycle of symphonies and perform the composer's last, Ninth Symphony. A sharp decline in health made A. Bruckner worry about the future. All his thoughts revolved around the Ninth Symphony, which the composer wrote until the last day of his life. And he didn't finish... However, the Ninth Symphony is A. Bruckner's "swan song", a work of great scale and depth, standing next to the Ninths of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Antonín Dvořák... "No other work of A. Bruckner reveals the secrets of human existence, life and death, their philosophical depth quite like this one. Like a gigantic peak among other peaks, the Ninth stands out among his previous symphonies, surprising in its scale," – writes musicologist Viktoras Gerulaitis. As if sensing the end of life, the composer fills the music of the symphony with an elegiac farewell sadness. However, this lyricism is bright, as if freed from the burden of earthly suffering, and exudes peace.