Naujienos

Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, Acting Director General, Excellency Michael Møller please, accept our gratitude to you and your Cultural Activities team for the patronage and the opening of this Concert. I sincerely thank our neighbours and partners: His Excellency Ambassador of Poland Remigiusz A. Henczel and his team for the effective cooperation that has led to this significant evening. This concert is a closing event of the cultural programme dedicated to the Lithuanian Presidency of the European Union Council which is now approaching the end. The whole sequence of cultural events was to reinforce our partnerships with international community, our EU partners and friends.

Since re-establishment of Lithuania’s Indepence in 1990, Poland has been one of our strategic partners, whereas culture has for centuries constituted important part of our identities.

Shared Polish and Lithuanian history has known periods of joint victories and setbacks. We have lived through the two centuries of the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth, or the Republic of Both Nations, with a Constitution of 1791, a first modern Constitution in Europe.

Our countries have collective memories of partitions and annexations, and of territorial disputes, but also of national revivals and reassertion of identities and independences.

Dear Friends,

The fate of the Bacevičius – Bacewicz family amazingly reflects the historical experience of our countries. The story of talented brother and sister is a story of dramatically different paths of life and such diverse identities and artistic expressions. The prolific, romantic and neo-classical Gražyna Bacewicz, and an ardent advocate of modernity, a visionary avant-garde spirit of Vytautas Bacevičius both are outstanding musical personalities in many ways transcending the limits of the ordinary. Once separated by choice or fate, they are reunited in this concert’s programme.

Ladies and gentlemen,

I’m very proud to present two brilliant maestros Dr. Gabrielius Alekna and Prof. Bartłomiej Nizioł.

Starting with violinist Prof. Bartlomiej Niziol who performs as a soloist with the English Chamber Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, NDR Hamburg, New Japan Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, under such conductors as Yehudi Menuhin, David Zinman, Krzysztof Penderecki to name a few. Professors CD recordings of Wieniawski, Bacewicz and the 6 Ysaye Solo Sonatas have won him the prestigious awards in Poland.

The list of achievements of my compatriot and a good friend Gabrielius is no shorter.

Prize-winner of fourteen international competitions, Dr Gabrielius Alekna is the first Lithuanian to hold a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. His doctoral thesis on the unpublished piano works by Bacevičius was awarded with the Richard F. French prize as the best doctoral thesis of the year at the Juilliard School. Currently based in New York, Alekna appears as a soloist in Vienna’s Musikverein with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, has been a featured soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra and the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. We are proud that Gabrielius regularly returns to Lithuania to give concerts and lectures and master classes as a Visiting Professor at the Music Academy of Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania.

As we see, the creative territories of these musicians do not coincide with those of their native countries. No doubt that this evening we shall witness the performance of two professionals of the highest rank.