Sibelius / Vasks / Brahms

“Music is the most powerful of all muses, because through it we can touch the sphere of the divine. Yes, music is an abstraction, but sounds can express the spirit. One that cannot be expressed in words. Everywhere around us people talk about the body, but I feel like calling out, 'Where is the spirit, where is the soul?' The soul is overgrown like a jungle. That's why I try to make my music bring a ray of light into them.” That's how Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks described his approach to composition. His works often bear programmatic titles, which only hint at the composer's mind-set rather than a specific programme. In this sense, his last concertante works dedicated to string instruments are closest to each other: the violin concerto Distant Light, the meditation Lonely Angel, the fantasy Vox amoris or the Concerto for cello “Presence”. The solo part of Vasks's work will be conducted by the concertmaster of the Slovak Philharmonic Jarolím Emmanuel Ružička.

Today, Jean Sibelius is rightly revered by the world as one of the most outstanding symphonists of the first half of the 20th century. Seven symphonies, a monumental vocal symphony, Kullervo, numerous symphonic paintings, but his journey to the symphony was not due to the controversy of “how to go on after Beethoven?” easy. He bids a definitive farewell to “tradition ” in the Fifth Symphony, the music of the Sixth and Seventh already coming from other galaxies…

The majestic work of Sibelius's predecessor, Symphony No. 4, Op. 98 Johannes Brahms, can be considered the pinnacle of the composer's symphonic output. At the time of composition, the composer was slowly approaching the end of his earthly pilgrimage, and he seems to have known and felt it. He demonstrates the universality of his emotional world, encompassing seriousness and light-heartedness, burlesque comedy, elegiac reverie and rebellion, oscillating between nostalgia and feelings of sadness.