In Loving Memory. To mark the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Warsaw and Vilnius ghettos

Patron of the concert – Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė

Performers:
LITHUANIAN NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
(artistic director and principal conductor Modestas Pitrėnas)
Soloists: LUKAS GENIUŠAS (piano), RAFAILAS KARPIS (tenor), GLEB PYŠNIAK (cello), DALIA DĖDINSKAITĖ (violin), ARKADY GOTESMAN (percussion)
Conductor MODESTAS PITRĖNAS

Programme:
ANDRZEJ PANUFNIK – Tragic Overture
WITOLD LUTOSŁAWSKI – Concerto for piano and orchestra
JOSEPH ACHRON – The Hebrew Melody for violin and orchestra
ANATOLIJUS ŠENDEROVAS – Sulamitos giesmės (Songs of Shulamith) for cello and orchestra; Iš užmirštos knygos... (From the Forgotten Book) for tenor and orchestra (text by Jewish folk)

For the start of its concert season the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society has chosen a meaningful historical commemoration – the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Warsaw and Vilnius ghettos, which became a testimony of the Jewish genocide. The people who were imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto since 6 September 1941 and survived still bear witness to the crime of the occupiers and the incomprehensible devaluation of human beings. In Vilnius, the ghetto was liquidated in September 1943, but in Warsaw ghetto, in April of the same year, the Jews revolted, even though they knew this would lead to their doom. As Halina Birenbaum, a 93-year-old survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, recalled, “the uprising was a suicide. We could not win, but we had to harm them.”

The orchestral music programme includes works by Lithuanian and Polish contemporary composers – Andrzej Panufnik, Witold Lutosławski and Anatolijus Šenderovas, performed by the most prominent musicians of our country and the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Maestro Modestas Pitrėnas.