VILNIUS FESTIVAL 2024
28th festival
Mission possible
June 2–21, 2024

VF 2024 programme
VF 2024 booklet

The 28th Vilnius Festival ‘Mission Possible’ seeks to reflect the historical musical culture and modern interpretations of it. Composers and performers have always been blessed with special insights and creative reactions to the challenges faced by individuals, society and the state, and have been able to capture and immortalize important historical events in music. The Vilnius Festival will reveal to its audiences a number of historical and contemporary scores evincing enslaved peoples’ struggle for civil and religious freedom, and the aspiration to establish democratic states (Krzysztof Penderecki’s ‘Chaconne’ from his Polish Requiem, Arvo Pärt’s Credo, Osvaldas Balakauskas’ Requiem in Memoriam Stasys Lozoraitis), spiritual resurrection after personal dramas (Ludwig van Beethoven’s Hammerklavier piano sonata, Mieczysław Weinberg’s Concerto for cello and orchestra, Richard Strauss’ A Hero’s Life, Antanas Rekašius’ Music for Strings), and the five-century-old story of the musical glorification of the kings of England by The King’s Singers.

The festival will be a platform for significant partnerships, bringing together performers from different generations. The Vilnius String Quartet and the Ukrainian Young Soloists Quartet will present works by Osvaldas Balakauskas and his teacher, the Ukrainian composer Boris Lyatoshinsky. For the first time, Vilnius will be the setting for a joint programme featuring the Italian Baroque Orchestra Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Sollima, one of the most famous contemporary Italian composers and cellists. The festival will foster cooperation between the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and the prominent American baritone and teacher Thomas Hampson.

The Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society will host world-famous masters of music: the pianist Marc-André Hamelin, the baritone Thomas Hampson, the conductors Victorien Vanoosten, Modestas Pitrėnas and Robertas Šervenikas, the violinist Sergej Krylov, and the flautist Giovanni Antonini. It will also host a wealth of outstanding young talents: the British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the Ukrainian pianist Dmitri Levkovich, the Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Gabrielė Kupšytė, the rising star of the piano, the Israeli Yoav Levanon, and the vocal ensemble The King’s Singers in a new line-up. In accordance with tradition, the festival will feature a large number of Lithuanian ensembles.

May all the encounters and musical experiences of the festival enrich and strengthen: a mission that is possible!

Rūta Prusevičienė
Director of the Vilnius Festival