Media information, 26 February 2024.
On Friday, 8 March, marking the Cesis Concert Hall’s tenth anniversary, a programme will be performed in which classical meets contemporary. The Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO), conducted by Ainars Rubikis, together with violinist Robert Balanas, will perform John Adams’ Concerto for Electric Violin, Samplers and Orchestra, “The Dharma at Big Sur.” The programme also includes Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter.”
Concert hall representatives are delighted to once again welcome to Cesis, after a break of several years, London-based violinist Robert Balanas – a musician whose experience in academic music combines with the worlds of pop, rock and funk, creating a sound uniquely his own.
In 2021, three members of the Balanas family – cellist Margarita Balanas and violinists Kristine Balanas and Robert Balanas – began a residency at the Cesis Concert Hall, performing American minimalist composer John Adams’ Concerto for Electric Violin, Samplers and Orchestra, “The Dharma at Big Sur,” originally commissioned to mark the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall – home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic – in 2003. The composer has said that in this concerto he wanted to reflect everyone’s physical and spiritual experience of arriving and settling to live in California, calling himself an immigrant of the Pacific coast. Listening to violinist Tracy Silverman perform in a jazz club, Adams realised that the true meaning of music, especially outside Western cultures, lies between the notes. He carried this idea with him throughout the work’s creation. The concerto, in two parts, is dedicated to composers and friends of Adams, Lou Harrison and Terry Riley.
“Ainars and I have known each other for more than ten years – I had only been living in London for a few months when I took part in a large concert project bringing together several English youth orchestras to perform Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. We performed this programme in England’s most beautiful concert halls, and I have very vivid memories of those concerts. For several years now, Ainars and I have been thinking about performing this unusual work by John Adams, and finally this idea will be realised! I look forward to the concert with great anticipation, and I am delighted to return to the Cesis Concert Hall, which for me is associated with a warm audience reception, as well as special musical experiences from my and my sisters’ residency in 2021,” reveals Robert Balanas.
The concert programme’s second half features Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. In the summer of 1788 (over roughly nine weeks), the composer’s last three symphonies were created: it is possible he had planned to one day bring them to London, though this idea never came to pass. They conclude his work in the symphonic genre with a culmination, and the last of them – Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter” – reaches the highest peaks of classical symphony and Mozartian excellence.
Tickets can be purchased at the Cesis Concert Hall box office, at Bilesu Paradize outlets and online.