LNSO, “Duo Andersson” and Modestas Pitrėnas. Premiere of a Work by Digimas, Masterpieces by Martinů and Bruckner

Performers:
LITHUANIAN NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
(artistic director and principal conductor Modestas Pitrėnas)
DUO ANDERSSON: JULIJA ANDERSSON (violin), PAULIUS ANDERSSON (piano)
Conductor MODESTAS PITRĖNAS

Programme:
DOMINYKAS DIGIMAS – After Solarisation for violin, piano and symphony orchestra (commission of 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)

Tonight, Duo Andersson shares the stage with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and its artistic director, conductor Modestas Pitrėnas. Having been performing together since 2021, the duo consists of two well-known musicians of the younger generation in Lithuania: violinist Julija Andersson and pianist Paulius Andersson. The duo is the winner of the first prize and the 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 programmes to audiences in other countries. J. Andersson is a member of the ensemble NICO and has appeared in Carnegie Hall in New York, the Tonhalle in Zurich, and the Gewandhaus in Leipzig. Hailing from a renowned family of pianists, P. Andersson is a laureate of more than 20 international piano competitions. The performers believe that Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů’s Concerto for violin, piano, and orchestra will be performed in Lithuania for the first time. Composed in 1953, this double concerto blends the spirit of Neo-Romanticism and Neoclassicism.

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

The Austrian composer Anton Bruckner was not recognized until the performance of his Seventh symphony in 1884, by which time he was already sixty years old. Until then, orchestras and conductors had often rejected his works as ‘unplayable’. Only the triumph of the Seventh saved his early symphonies from oblivion; from that time on, they brought the composer belated worldwide fame. One of his early works is Symphony No. 3 in D minor, Op. 94, dedicated to Richard Wagner. According to the German conductor and musicologist Rudolf Kloiber, the Third symphony marks the beginning of a series of Bruckner’s masterpieces, in which his creativity merges with his ability to build an impressive musical structure. This work is known as the symphony the composer revised the most: there are no fewer than six versions, three of which are widely performed today.

Concert partner – Čiurlionis Music Festival (PI “Klasika LT”)