The Vilnius Festival concert on 18 June promises a stunning encounter: two musical elements, two eternal dipolar beginnings, the divine and the satanic, will be manifested in the form of music by the German and Italian Baroque geniuses, embodied by the performers who have been ceaselessly mesmerising the Lithuanian audience: Andrius Žlabys, a pianist who is inseparably linked with the keyboard concertos of Johann Sebastian Bach, and Sergej Krylov, a violinist and artistic director of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, who will take you to Giuseppe Tartini’s dream with Devil’s Trill.
Bach’s music is said to open up the universe, as if to allow us to immerse ourselves in the observation of eternity. Whether church cantatas, keyboard concertos or other works, the power of their impact is so strong that Bach has been compared to a great mountain and called the foundation of the music of European civilisation. “Bach’s music has a strong healing effect on the heart. It would be hard for me to imagine the world without his music”, Andrius Žlabys said in an interview about Bach.
Internationally acclaimed and Grammy-nominated, Žlabys gives recitals and performs with some of the world’s most renowned orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, among others. The pianist’s “refined artistry” (The New York Sun) has paved the way to the most famous concert halls in New York, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires, London, Vienna and Tokyo. “Andrius’ unique interpretations stunned with serendipity and the joys of previously unimagined discoveries”, musicologist Edmundas Gedgaudas (7 meno dienos) has written about his performance in Vilnius.
Žlabys’ deep bond with Bach’s music was described in The Philadelphia Inquirer as “the beloved C major chord arpeggios that begin The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One rippled off of Žlabys hands with such open-hearted rightness that you couldn’t escape the notion that the pianist was acting as Bach’s ventriloquist…” So, at the Vilnius Festival, the pianist and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra will be performing Bach again! They will offer two gems of Bach’s keyboard music: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major (BWV 1050) and the Concerto for keyboard and orchestra No. 1 in D minor (BWV 1052).
Highly acclaimed by classical music experts and connoisseurs alike, Brandenburg Concertos take us back to 1717, when Bach moved to Köthen and took up the position of Kapellmeister at the court of Duke Leopold. Here he composed 6 French Suites, 6 English Suites, 6 Brandenburg Concertos and many other instrumental works, uniquely developing the concerto grosso genre, based on the juxtaposition of an orchestra and a soloist or a group of solo instruments. In Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, the soloing keyboard, together with the violin and flute, seems to oppose the string group. Bach wrote a particularly eloquent soloist part in one of his first concertos for keyboard and orchestra, No 1 in D minor, developing it expressively throughout the three movements. This concerto, full of exuberance and virtuosic passages, occupies a special place in Žlabys’ repertoire and is often heard in his recitals as one of the finest examples of Bach’s immortal art.
And where is the ‘satanic’ touch to the concert? The composer Giuseppe Tartini allegedly told the French astronomer Jérôme Lalande a dream, which Lalande published in his book Voyage d’un François en Italie (A Journey in France and Italy): “One night, in the year 1713 I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata so wonderful and so beautiful, played with such great art and intelligence, as I had never even conceived in my boldest flights of fantasy. I felt enraptured, transported, enchanted: my breath failed me, and I awoke. I immediately grasped my violin in order to retain, in part at least, the impression of my dream. In vain! The music which I at this time composed is indeed the best that I ever wrote, and I still call it the Devil’s Trill, but the difference between it and that which so moved me is so great that I would have destroyed my instrument and have said farewell to music forever if it had been possible for me to live without the enjoyment it affords me.”
Vilnius Festival audience will have an exceptional opportunity to hear this extremely intriguing and one of the most challenging works for violin, Sonata for violin and piano in G minor, B. g5 (Devil’s Trill), in the sumptuous Hugo Kauder’s orchestral arrangement. The complex challenges of bowing, rhythm and articulation here require the performer’s extraordinary technical and artistic skills. These are certainly the qualities of violinist Sergej Krylov, whose exquisite vivid musicianship, intense lyricism and enchanting beauty of sound captivate audiences around the world. Krylov performs with major orchestras in Europe, Asia and America, under the baton of world-renowned conductors, and conducts orchestras in many countries. Krylov became artistic director and principal conductor of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra (LCO) in 2008, has given more than 200 concerts with the orchestra worldwide; the prestigious classical music label Deutsche Grammophon has released recordings of the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and Krylov. Will the tandem of the violinist and the LCO unravel the mystery of the dream? Will Tartini’s dream become reality? Only those who attend the concert will know the answer.
The exclusive evening of the Vilnius Festival features Movement for Strings and Piano by Andrius Žlabys, who is progressively taking his stance in the field of composition. Composed in 2016–2017, the work was commissioned by Seattle’s Town Hall (where it was first performed). The composer says that “the idea for the composition and the initial motif of the three rising notes emerged in the wake of the events in Ukraine in 2014. The work was born out of those feelings and thoughts and is dedicated to the memory of the victims of war. I feel solidarity with Ukraine – after all, Lithuania is also threatened by that menace. There is a hidden sense of foreboding in this work.” One of the most powerful episodes in the composition is the sarabande performed by the string quartet after the climax. Later, the piano, which joins the quartet, seems to destroy the harmonious aura with complex passages, creating a parallel reality, a hallucinatory feeling... Whether this reflects the satanic or the divine world is left to the listeners to decide.
Vilnius Festival concert Dispute Between J.S. Bach and A. Žlabys. LCO, Sergej Krylov, Andrius Žlabys will take place on Wednesday, 18 June at 19.00 in the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Concert Hall. All concerts of Vilnius Festival are announced on the website www.nationalphilharmonic.lt The festival is organised by the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society and PI Vilnius Festivals, with the support of Vilnius City Municipality, Juozas and Laima Magelinskas and Artis Centrum Hotels.
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