The Cello Cēsis Festival gala programme features two talented Latvian musicians, two sisters who currently star on some of the world’s greatest stages, both as solo musicians and as a duet ‒ cellist Margarita Balanas and violinist Kristīne Balanas. Appearing with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, they will perform the original Double Concerto for Violin and Cello by Philip Glass.

In 2010, the Nederlands Dans Theater commissioned from the composer music for their Swan Song ballet. Instead of composing a traditional-form piece for a dance production, Philip Glass wrote a double concerto where two soloists (cello and violin) are like avatars of the two leading dancers. Traditionally, the soloist is musically either contrasted with the orchestra or they create an interplay with an emphasis on the solo parts. In this sense, this double concerto is truly unique: Glass has ignored all the usual forms, and every orchestra part opens with a duet. At the Cello Cēsis Festival Glass’ masterpiece will be performed by the marvellous Balanas sisters.

The second part of the concert offers a performance by the special guest of the festival, the German-Japanese cellist Danjulo Ishizaka, one of the world’s greatest cello players of his generation. He is ‘a veritable musical personality, phenomenal in his technical potential’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung), ‘spectacular, brilliant and highly expressive’ (FAZ); Danjulo ‘sings on the cello (…), each melodic vibration expresses an emotion, profoundly musical and profoundly human’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung). Ishizaka will perform Sergei Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante, a piece dedicated to one of the greatest legends in the history of cello music, Mstislav Rostropovich.

Margarita BALANAS, cello

Kristīne BALANAS, violin

Danjulo ISHIZAKA, cello/Germany

Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra

Conductor Robertas ŠERVENIKAS