LNSO, Duo Andersson and Modestas Pitrėnas. Digimas premiere, Martinů and Bruckner masterpieces

Performers: Lithuanian national symphony orchestra (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Modestas Pitrėnas) DUO ANDERSSON: JULIJA ANDERSSON (violin), PAULIUS ANDERSSON (piano) Conductor MODESTAS PITRĖNAS

Program: DOMINYKAS DIGIMAS – “After Solarisation” for violin, piano, and symphony orchestra (commissioned by the International M. K. Čiurlionis Music Festival, premiere) BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ – Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra, H. 342 ANTON BRUCKNER – Symphony No. 3 in D minor, Op. 94 (“Wagner Symphony”)

This evening, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and its artistic director, conductor Modestas Pitrėnas, are joined by “Duo Andersson” – well-known Lithuanian musicians of the younger generation who have been performing as a duo since 2021: violinist Julija Andersson and pianist Paulius Andersson. The duo are winners of the 1st prize and a special prize for the best performance of a work by J. Brahms at the International Chamber Music Competition Pinerolo (2025, Italy). Promoting Lithuanian music, the duo aims to present rarely performed works and conceptual programs to audiences in other countries. J. Andersson is a musician with the ensemble NIKO, having performed at Carnegie Hall in New York, Tonhalle in Zurich, and Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Coming from a well-known dynasty of pianists, P. Andersson is a laureate of more than 20 international piano competitions. The performers believe that the Concerto for Violin, Piano, and Orchestra by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů will be performed in Lithuania for the first time. Created in 1953, the double concerto combines the spirit of neo-romanticism and neoclassicism.

This concert will also feature the premiere performance of “After Solarisation” for violin, piano, and symphony orchestra by Dominykas Digimas, a creator from the youngest generation of Lithuanian composers. The composer actively participates in various genres and interdisciplinary projects, as well as contemporary music festivals in Lithuania and abroad; he composes music for theater productions and is one of the founders of the contemporary music ensemble “Synaesthesis”.

Austrian composer Anton Bruckner only gained recognition after the performance of his Seventh Symphony in 1884, by which time he was already sixty years old – until then, orchestras and conductors often rejected his works as “unplayable”. Only the triumph of the Seventh saved his early symphonies from oblivion, and since then, they have brought the composer belated worldwide fame. One of these early works is Symphony No. 3 in D minor, Op. 94, dedicated to Richard Wagner. According to German conductor and musicologist Rudolf Kloiber, the Third Symphony begins a sequence of A. Bruckner’s masterpieces in which his creativity merges with the ability to create an impressive structure for a work. This opus is known as the symphony most revised by its author: there are at least six versions, three of which are widely performed today.