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“The orchestra’s impeccable unison has contrived ambience that seemed to float into non-existence, into an oscillating calm. The meaningful long pauses offered by the conductor allowed the listener to maintain that state of calm. The trumpets brought back the other thematic nubs of the opera, shattering the thoughtful state. The beautiful dialogues of the orchestral instruments poured out”, Rita Aleknaitė-Bieliauskienė wrote about the Vilnius Festival concert Three Heroes: Wagner, Liszt, Strauss, complimenting the conductor Victorien Vanoosten, already well-known to our audience, and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO).

On 5 October, we will hear the works by three romantic heroes, Wagner, Schumann and Mahler. Vanoosten, who has become the LNSO’s Principal Guest Conductor for three years, will grace the conductor’s podium. The maestro studied piano at the Paris Conservatoire, conducting in Paris and Helsinki. Currently, he is an assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. Vanoosten has been invited to conduct Paris Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Staatskapelle, Marseille Philharmonic, Vienna Tonkünstler, Montreal Métropolitain and other orchestras, and has collaborated with soloists such as Stéphanie d’Oustrac, Karine Deshayes, Sabine Devieilhe, Marianne Crebassa, Rolando Villazón. The conductor has been awarded the Order of the French Republic for contributions to French culture.

Maximilian Hornung, the soloist in Schumann’s Concerto for cello and orchestra in A minor, was born in 1986 in Augsburg and began playing the cello at the age of eight, with David Geringas as one of his teachers. Hornung has performed with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, Zurich Tonhalle, the Czech Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Dallas Symphony and others. He has collaborated with Yannick Nézét-Séguin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Daniel Harding, Bernard Haitink, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Antje Weithaas, Hélène Grimaud, Christian Tetzlaff, Lisa Batiashvili, and many other renowned musicians, and has appeared at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Wigmore Hall in London, and in the philharmonic halls in Berlin, Cologne and Essen.

In addition to Schumann’s Cello concerto from his late period (1850), this concert will feature Wagner’s overture to Lohengrin, also known as the Prelude (1848), and Mahler’s magnificent Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor (1902), the fourth movement of which is the venerable Adagietto. According to the composer, for him, writing a symphony is the same as creating a world by musical means.