Returning to the LNSO is Vassily Sinaisky – the orchestra’s former artistic director (1975–1987), under whom the quality of the orchestra’s playing changed substantially and its concert life expanded well beyond Latvia.
This time Vassily Sinaisky has chosen the work by Edward Elgar entitled “Variations on an Original Theme” (“Enigma”), in which the eminent English composer draws musical portraits of his family and friends. Many will have heard the most famous and most beautiful of them, “Nimrod”, but now there is a chance to hear the whole gallery of portraits in one sitting. The title “Enigma” chimes perfectly with the LNSO theme of this season, “Music and Mathematics”, and gives us reason to talk about how names, titles and ideas can be encoded in sound.
It is a delight that Vassily Sinaisky will conduct the Latvian symphonic classic Jānis Ivanovs’ Symphony No. 21, which he himself premiered all those years ago. Ivanovs did not finish work on the symphony, and it was orchestrated and completed by the master’s student Juris Karlsons.
The concerto slot in the programme goes to Sergei Prokofiev and his compact, brilliant First Piano Concerto, and here we meet for the first time in Riga a rising star of the piano – the young Cuban Jorge González Buajasán.
But perhaps the most important thing of all is that on this evening the LNSO will award Vassily Sinaisky the title of LNSO honorary conductor (conductor emeritus) in gratitude for everything the maestro once did to nurture Latvia’s symphonic life and Latvian music.
The programmeis available here.
Jorge González Buajasán – piano