About

Giedrius Kuprevičius, a recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize, the Government Prize and other important prizes, versatile personality, composer, pedagogue, essayist and polemist, celebrates his 80th anniversary this year. On this occasion, concerts of his works are being held in various Lithuanian venues, attracting great attention. “The composer’s creative biography has taken many interesting turns: in 1980–1987 he founded the electronic music group Argo at Kaunas Music Theatre, since 1957 he has been a regular performer on the Kaunas carillon, and in 1998 he was appointed head carillonist of Kaunas. The composer has written one of the most popular musicals in Lithuania, Ugnies medžioklė su varovais (Fire Hunt and Beaters) (1975), and the song Kregždutės (Little Swallows) from this musical became a real hit song in Lithuania. The composer also writes music in traditional genres: operas, symphonies, chamber works, oratorios and vocal cycles. Kuprevičius’ music is moderately modern, many of his works are notably dominated by improvisational element and vivid links to literature and visual arts. The composer also composes music for theatre and film” (mic.lt). The reviewer Alina Ramanauskienė described Kuprevičius as a composer with a sense of humour, incredible wit, and at times irony, emphasising what is perhaps most clearly encoded in the maestro’s current music – “subtexts that allow to say more and more aptly than just words”.

Concert programme features Symphony Without Piano, written in 2018, as an orchestral version of Sonata No. 2 for piano (1970). The highlight of the evening will be his new four-movement Concerto for violin and orchestra Keturi barono Miunhauzeno sapnai (Four Dreams of Baron Munchausen), which has not been performed in Lithuania before. “I came up with the idea of a dreaming Munchausen. After all, the dream form allows escaping from being too literary, and for the audience, all of whom probably know Munchausen’s stories by heart, it helps to go into subconscious fantasies of imagery, without me having to put my finger on the Baron’s specific stories. The chosen dream times (dawn, afternoon, slumber, night) are also realms of different states. In fact, it is quite different to sink into dream in the middle of the night and at dawn” says the composer of the idea for the work, which was inspired by his creative colleague, violinist Boris Livschitz.

Javier Comesaña Barrera, a young violin virtuoso born in Seville, will solo in Keturi barono Miunhauzeno sapnai (Four Dreams of Baron Munchausen) with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra. For his achievements, the violinist has received a diploma from Her Majesty Queen Sofia of Spain. He is also the winner of the 1st prize at the Jascha Heifetz Competition in Vilnius, as well as the recipient of Prinz von Hessen-Preis award from the Kronberg Academy.

In addition to Kuprevičius’ opuses tonight’s programme will also include the well-known excerpts from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt suites, as well as one of the most distinctive works of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara, the Concerto for birds and orchestra Cantus arcticus. The composer used recordings of the voices of Arctic birds made in the Lapland and Liminka wetlands, electronically altering their songs to blend with the orchestral sounds, with the wind instruments also imitating the birds.