Once More About the Genius of Beethoven. Antti Siirala, Vassilis Christopoulos and LCO

Performers:
LITHUANIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
(artistic director and conductor Sergej Krylov)
Soloist ANTTI SIIRALA (piano; Finland)
Conductor VASSILIS CHRISTOPOULOS (Greece)

Programme:
GIOACCHINO ROSSINI – Overture to the opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN – Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
FELIX MENDELSSOHN – Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 (Italian)

Tonight, the Vilnius Festival presents new names – Finnish pianist Antti Siirala and Greek conductor Vassilis Christopoulos perform with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra for the first time.

At the age of eighteen, in 1997, Antti Siirala won the Beethoven International Piano Competition in Vienna to become the youngest laureate in the history of the competition. Beethoven’s works take the central part of the pianist’s repertoire, he has performed all of Beethoven’s piano works at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and has released a number of albums featuring the works of this Viennese classicist. Tonight’s concert will feature Siirala’s rendition of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. The pianist has given concerts in such halls as the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonic, London’s Wigmore Hall, Zurich’s Tonhalle, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Lucerne and Ruhr festivals, and has performed with the London and Helsinki Philharmonic, Berlin, Bamberg, San Francisco and Tokyo symphony orchestras as well as the majority of German radio symphony orchestras.

Vassilis Christopoulos is one of the best-known Greek conductors, active on both concert and opera scenes. His repertoire comprises operas ranging from the Baroque to the 21st century; the latest productions include Berg’s Wozzeck, Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and R. Strauss’ Elektra. With the latter opera Christopoulos opened a new Greek National Opera in Athens.

The conductor has collaborated with the German and Nuremberg State Philharmonic orchestras, Hanover, Saarbrücken, Cologne Radio, Prague Radio, Mozarteum, New Japan and Qatar philharmonic orchestras, Queensland, Flanders, the Loire National Region as well as many other German and Greek orchestras. In 2013, he was decorated with an honourable French insignia – Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (the Order of the Knight of Honour for Art and Literature).