LITHUANIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Artistic director, soloist and conductor SERGEJ KRYLOV (violin)
GIUNTER PERCUSSION Ensemble (leader Pavel Giunter)
Soloists: IAN BOSTRIDGE (tenor, United Kingdom), BEN GOLDSCHEIDER (French horn, United Kingdom)
EDWARD ELGAR – Serenade for strings in E minor, Op. 20
BENJAMIN BRITTEN – Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, Op. 31 (text by English poets)
LEONARD BERNSTEIN – Serenade for violin, percussion and strings (after Plato’s Symposium)
Today, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, its artistic director, violinist and conductor Sergej Krylov, tenor Ian Bostridge, horn player Ben Goldscheider and Giunter Percussion Ensemble invite to listen to serenades. In Italian and French languages, serenade means evening song, and tonight the audience will hear how different and varied works of this genre can be.
Edward Elgar is associated with the revival of English musical culture. He developed his own individual style based on musical folklore and early English music; his works are marked by neo-Romanticism. Elgar composed his vivid, lyrical Serenade for strings in E minor in 1892 as a love song for his beloved wife Alice. Benjamin Britten’s Serenade, written in 1943, is a song cycle for tenor, horn, and string orchestra. To portray images of the night, the composer employed poems by six English poets from the 15th–19th centuries.
The second part of the concert will feature American composer Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade for violin, strings, harp, and percussion (1954). The violin dominates this work as the solo instrument, therefore the opus is sometimes referred to as a concerto for violin. Bernstein drew inspiration for Serenade (Serenade, after Plato’s Symposium) from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s work Symposium, or On Love.
Tonight’s guests from the United Kingdom – tenor Ian Bostridge and horn player Ben Goldscheider. Bostridge is a performer of both opera and chamber music, collaborating with the most famous orchestras, conductors, and theatres. His repertoire ranges from Baroque to the latest experimental works by contemporary composers, and, according to the singer himself, he feels closest to the music of Benjamin Britten.
The young horn player Goldscheider has given recitals in major European concert halls, including the Concertgebouw, Wigmore Hall, Pierre Boulez Saal, and the Elbphilharmonie and Cologne Philharmonic Hall. He has collaborated with Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, festivals such as Verbier, Salzburg, Jerusalem, Intonations (Berlin), Barenboim (Buenos Aires) and others, as well as renowned orchestras.
