Conductor Andris VECUMNIEKS
Programme:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Alexander Glazunov, Antonio Vivaldi, and new works by young composers Līva Blūma, Oļesja Kozlovska and Leonīds Lobrevs
This season LeNeSOns has taken up gardening, but by now he is so used to music that he cannot even sink a spade into the soil without the inspiring chords of a symphony orchestra. At the autumn concert LeNeSOns’s musical allies will be audience favourite Vivaldi, this year’s great anniversary composer Tchaikovsky, and three young composers – Līva Blūma with her fierce rake, Oļesja Kozlovska with a honey-loving bear, and Leonīds Lobrevs with a hymn to all things green.
Lending LeNeSOns a hand in the garden will be the familiar team behind the LNSO morning concerts for children – playwright Lauris Gundars, director Paula Pļavniece, video artist Austra Hauks and conductor Andris Vecumnieks. Whether Agent GWF (Garden Work Fanatic) will turn up as well, nobody can say – after all, a spy’s movements can hardly be posted online for all to see.
Antonio Vivaldi’s music will dazzle LeNeSOns’s helpers with Italian virtuoso passagework, letting us watch both peasants at the harvest festival and hunters at work in the nearby forest. The violin solo will be played by Alise Bondarenko, a pupil of Olga Isakova at the Emīls Dārziņš Music School.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s “The Seasons” will also take us out to the wheat fields and the hunting grounds at the forest’s edge, only drawn here in the musical language of the Romantic era. Then, after a brief stop at Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “The Fair”, we will be ready to devote the interval to non-musical pleasures, so that in the second half we can judge what kind of symphonic music is written by those who are still learning to write symphonic music.
Oļesja Kozlovska has met two bears – a bassoon and a tuba. At first these bears are rather aggressive, but once brute force fails to win them any honey, both grow calm and watch the professional beekeepers at work with great interest. In the end everyone gets some very tasty honey indeed.
Leonīds Lobrevs opens his piece with a green light which, in his own words, symbolises the beginning of new life. Then come sprouting, growing and blossoming. For Leonīds the green element is the fifth essential element of all our lives, and we will hear an affirming tribute to the miracle of that green light.
And last of all, Līva Blūma and the tale of the Fierce Rake, whose splintery nature the wise Caretaker gently mends by simply swapping the bad handle for a good one. Līva’s cheerfully whistleable musical motif shows the Caretaker and the Rake riding home in a lorry, swinging their legs merrily after a job well done gathering up the autumn leaves.
Playwright Lauris Gundars
Artist Austra Hauks
Director Paula Pļavniece