LITHUANIAN NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
(artistic director and principal conductor Modestas Pitrėnas)
Soloist and conductor VICTORIEN VANOOSTEN (piano, France), soloist GABRIELĖ BUKINĖ (soprano)
MAURICE RAVEL – Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.1, M. 57a; Concerto for piano and orchestra in G major, M. 83; Song cycle Shéhérazade for soprano and orchestra, M. 41; Bolero, M. 81
“It’s great to be able to persuade others to do something nice together, to show the way for us all to do it. I’m my own biggest critic and I push myself because I don’t want to let musicians down. I do the same everywhere I go. Especially in Vilnius. And, I am sure, every work is stronger and more evocative when we perform it with love, with an emotional connection,” said in an interview the French pianist and conductor Victorien Vanoosten. Having been the principal guest conductor of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO) for a year now, he has produced spectacular romantic music concerts.
Vanoosten grew up in Lille, studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire, conducting in Paris and Helsinki. He won the ADAMI Conducting Competition in 2016. Vanoosten has enjoyed invitations to conduct the Paris Chamber Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, Vienna’s Tonkünstler, Montreal’s Métropolitain as well as various opera productions. The conductor has been decorated with the Order of the French Republic for services to French culture.
In this Vilnius Festival concert, Vanoosten, together with the LNSO and Gabrielė Bukinė, a soloist who has stormed the theatre and concert stages, explores the horizons of France through the prism of Maurice Ravel’s work: this year we celebrate the composer's 150th birthday. The writer Romain Rolland, also renowned as an authoritative music historian and critic, has named Ravel the greatest French music artist, mentioning him alongside Jean-Philippe Rameau and Claude Debussy. Ravel, Debussy’s younger contemporary, was no less adventurous, with rich imagination as well as impeccable compositional technique and artistic taste. He drew inspiration from the old masters, was particularly fond of the vivid folklore of Spain (his mother was of Basque descent) and was attracted to the genre of dance – it is no coincidence that we will hear Bolero and Daphnis et Chloé Suite No.1.
Conductor Vanoosten will also appear as a pianist, playing Ravel’s dazzling and vivacious Concerto for piano and orchestra in G major (1931), dedicated to the pianist Marguerite Long. Ravel’s music is often enhanced with exotic motifs; his song cycle Shéhérazade, saturated with eastern sonorities, is considered to be one of the first oriental harmony experiments in the composer’s oeuvre.
