LNSO, Mozart and Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”

Press information, 10 February 2025, Riga. On Friday, 14 February, at 19:00 at Hanzas Perons, audiences will have the opportunity to cross a musical bridge between eras together with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO), conducted by Guntis Kuzma, at the concert “LNSO, Mozart and Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.'” Alongside Franz Schubert’s legendary symphony, the concert programme also includes works by the Viennese classicist Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Latvian composer Gundars Pone. The soloist in Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto will be Latvian pianist Elina Bertina.

The concert programme includes the bright and refined “Six German Dances,” K. 509, by the 18th-century Austrian musical genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and one of the most brilliant instrumental concertos of the Classical era – Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto in C major. The soloist for its performance on 14 February will be pianist Elina Bertina. The Romantic era will be represented at the concert by Franz Schubert’s Eighth, or “Unfinished,” Symphony in B minor, about which music scholars still speculate – was it the composer’s intention to create a symphony in two movements, or was it simply chance and a coincidence of circumstances? Regardless, Schubert’s “Unfinished” is undeniably a masterful work of great significance for its time, one that did not find its way to audiences until nearly forty years after the composer’s death.

The 14 February concert will also feature a work by Latvian composer Gundars Pone, who once lived in America – “La bella Veneziana” (“The Beautiful Venetian”), a piece inspired by some of the most beautiful pages of 18th- and 19th-century music, in which the composer painted a musical portrait of his wife, Mariolina.

Soloist in the performance of Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto, pianist Elina Bertina, performs both as a soloist and in tandem with outstanding musicians. She was nominated for the Great Music Award 2021 in the category “Outstanding Achievement in Ensemble Performance.” She has performed with Sinfonietta Riga, Sinfonia Concertante, the LNSO, the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, the Olsztyn Philharmonic Orchestra, and the German String Philharmonic, with whom she went on a summer tour in 2018. She collaborates with outstanding Latvian musicians, and is a lecturer at the Jazeps Vitols Latvian Academy of Music and a teacher at the Emils Darzins Music School.

On the podium will be the chief conductor and artistic director of the Liepaja Symphony Orchestra, Guntis Kuzma. He shares a close artistic partnership with the LNSO as well, where he initially worked as an orchestra musician before serving as the orchestra’s conductor from 2014 to 2022. He is a recipient of the Great Music Award 2018 for his interpretation of Adolfs Skulte’s Fifth Symphony at the “Grand Concert of Latvian Symphonic Music” (conducting the LNSO), and for his role as soloist in a performance of Sebastian Fagerlund’s Clarinet Concerto.

This concert is included in the LNSO Spring Subscription 2025, available for purchase until 14 February. Tickets for the concert are available at “Bilesu Paradize” sales points and online. To follow the latest LNSO news, please visit the LNSO website and the orchestra’s Facebook page.