LNSO CELLO DREAM TEAM
Programme:
Gian Carlo Menotti,
Alfredo Piatti,
Antonio Vivaldi
and hits from Hollywood films.
CHAMBER MUSIC CONCERT
The massed cellos of the LNSODream Teamhave become a brand – audiences no longer ask what it is, they simply buy tickets, come to the Great Guild Hall and are delighted. The Latvian National Symphony Orchestra is proud of this “Dream Team”, which grew up under the orchestra’s wing and now, under the leadership of principal cellist Diana Ozoliņa, lives on as an independent chamber ensemble.
The LNSODream Teamhave included in their new programme works by the Italian composers Gian Carlo Menotti, Alfredo Piatti and Antonio Vivaldi, as well as Hollywood film hits arranged for cello voices.
Audiences first came across the name of the celloDream Teamin 2012. A year later the ensemble put together a programme of the golden cello repertoire, last year it gave the concert “Around Europe in 60 Minutes”, and this year it has prepared a programme of Italian-Hollywood vitality.
The first half of the programme features works by one of the most popular classical composers of all time – the prolific red-haired priest who died in poverty, was forgotten for centuries and rediscovered only in the 20th century, Antonio Vivaldi; by the eminent 19th-century teacher of cello playing Alfredo Piatti; and by the 20th-century Italian-American opera composer and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Gian Carlo Menotti, whose calling card is the opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors” and from whose list of works we shall hear the Suite for Two Cellos.
The second half of the programme is Hollywood! There will be, for example, a song by the American songwriter and pianist and multipleGrammywinner Burt Bacharach – the numberSouth American Getaway, written for the legendary train-robbery western of 1969,Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There will be the legendary sounds of “Mission: Impossible”, whose composer – the Argentinian, four-timeGrammywinner and six-time Oscar nominee Lalo Schifrin – few will be able to name, and yet everyone will know the music the moment that rhythmically and melodically taut spy theme strikes up. There will be John Williams’s music for the film “Schindler’s List”, James Bond will make his presence felt in the music of David Arnold, five times a Bond composer and currently the man behind Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and the concert will be crowned by a new work being written by the well-known cellist Kārlis Auzāns, leader of the cello trio “Melo-M”.