GIOVANNI SOLLIMA

The name of the cello virtuoso Giovanni Sollima is well known all over the world. Intensive performing activities alone are not enough to bring the artist’s creative energy to fruition. He is also famous for his innovative compositions for cello, not hemmed in a single genre or style but rather exploring the limits of this instrument. Sollima’s compositions display hints of minimalism, elements of jazz and rock, traditions of Mediterranean folklore and sounds of electronics. In his works, academic music vocabulary often intertwines with popular music idioms. Composed in 1993, Violoncelles, vibrez! (Violloncelli, vibrate!) for two cellos and strings became not only one of the first works to be recorded on a CD, but also probably the most popular and most frequently performed opus by the artist. Sollima dedicated this musical ballad to his friend Mario Brunello, his schoolmate at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, Austria. The inspiration for the work was the phrase “Violoncelli, vibrate!”, which was constantly repeated by his cello teacher Antonio Janigro.

In the  Lithuanian National Philharmonic  78th concert season’s opening concert the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra collaborates with Gleb Pyšniak, a member of the Čiurlionis Quartet, and Latvian cellist Ērik Kiršfeld, the principal cello of Liepaja Symphony Orchestra Amber Sound and a long-time Kremerata Baltica principal cello and soloist. Conducted by maestro Modestas Pitrėnas.