Myths and Legends 2. LNSO, Maximilian Hornung, Victorien Vanoosten

Performers: Lithuanian national symphony orchestra (Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Modestas Pitrėnas) Soloist MAXIMILIAN HORNUNG (cello, Germany) Conductor VICTORIEN VANOOSTEN (France)

Program: RICHARD STRAUSS – “Dance of the Seven Veils” (“Tanz der sieben Schleier”) from the opera “Salome”; Symphonic poem “Don Quixote” for cello, viola, and orchestra, Op. 35; Symphonic poem “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (“Also sprach Zarathustra”), Op. 30 JOSEPH JONGEN – “Fantasia” for violin and orchestra in E major, Op. 12 (violin solo Rasa Vosyliūtė)

The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and its principal guest conductor from France, Victorien Vanoosten, invite you to the second program of “Myths and Legends,” this time dedicated to the works of the German composer, conductor, and polymath Richard Strauss. His long creative journey, which began while R. Wagner was still alive, ended after the Second World War. The concert will open with the “Dance of the Seven Veils” from the highly scandalous opera “Salome” (R. Strauss wrote 15 operas). This is an orchestral fragment: Salome dances for her stepfather Herod, demanding the head of the prophet Jokanaan (John the Baptist) in return, and receives it on a silver platter.

The composer knew the capabilities of the most complex “instrument” – the symphony orchestra – perfectly and created more than 20 large-scale, mostly programmatic, orchestral works. This concert features two symphonic poems written in consecutive years: “Don Quixote” and “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (1896). The latter is one of the rare cases in music history where a philosophical work by Friedrich Nietzsche became the object of musical interpretation. R. Strauss was drawn to the originality and novelty of the ideas; the composer incorporated many brilliant discoveries into this work and demonstrated impressive innovations in orchestration.

In world music literature, it is difficult to find a more colorful and witty score than “Don Quixote,” created in 1897 based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes. The hero is shown here in all his grandeur, and features of parody and satire can be noticed in his musical portrait. The soloist for “Don Quixote,” cellist Maximilian Hornung, performs with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Czech Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of Vienna, Bamberg, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and others. He has collaborated with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Daniel Harding, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Christian Tetzlaff, and other famous musicians, and appears at the Vienna Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, and the philharmonic halls of Berlin and Cologne.