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At the opening of the 144th concert season, the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra invites you to an emotionally saturated concert in the “Lielais dzintars” Concert Hall on 14 September at 18:00, where romantic aesthetics will be expressed in colorful orchestration and melodic themes.
The central musical event of the concert will be John Corigliano's dazzling Clarinet concerto, where Guntis Kuzma, the chief conductor of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, will be the soloist this time, while the extravagant Swedish trombonist and conductor Cristian Lindberg will take the place at the conductor's desk.
Mr.Corigliano is one of the most prominent contemporary American composers, whose workroom shelves are decorated with five “Grammy” trophies, a Pulitzer Prize in music and also an “Oscar” for the music for the Canadian director François Girard's drama “The Red Violin”, where the starring role was played by one of the most famous Hollywood actors of his generation, Samuel Lee Jackson.
John Corigliano was first nominated for the Oscar 20 years earlier for the score to Ken Russell's movie Altered States.
Back in the day, the Concerto for clarinet and orchestra was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, and was premiered in 1977 under the direction of the legendary American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
The composer himself mentions childhood memories and attending rehearsals and concerts with his father, who was a concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic at the time, as the inspiration for the Clarinet Concerto. This enabled him to get to know many orchestra musicians, and this feeling of closeness created a desire to use the entire orchestra in the piece to the fullest.
“My respect for the musicians of the Philharmonic also shaped their role in the accompaniment of this concert. At the concert, each musician is given the chance to demonstrate their solo virtuosity. Often, in its requirements the work is close to a concert orchestra. When I was young, the soloist Stanley Drucker was the first clarinetist of the Philharmonic. Knowing about his special talents, I was able to write music of unprecedented complexity for a solo instrument, and this gave me the idea for the opening cadenza of the first movement,” the composer writes in the notes to his sheet music.
Mr.Corigliano's Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra is often referred to as the most complex piece ever written for the clarinet. It is a virtuoso, colorful composition that combines neoclassical stylistics with romantic melodies and dynamic rhythms, emphasizing the clarinet as a solo instrument.
In 2018, clarinetist and conductor Guntis Kuzma impressed in every role of his artistic activity and received the Grand Music Award in the category “For outstanding interpretation” for the original and deeply thought-out reading of Ādolfs Skulte's Fifth Symphony in coopertion with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, and the virtuoso brilliant and emotionally thrilling solo part in the harmonious plays with the “Sinfonietta Rīga” and conductor Normunds Šnē in the Clarinet concerto of the Finnish composer Sebastian Fagerlund. Guntis Kuzma has been working as the artistic director and chief conductor of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra since 2022.
Tickets for the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra concerts can be purchased at “Biļešu paradīze” ticket offices.
The Concert is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, the State Cultural Capital Foundation and Liepāja City.
