Beethoven's Choral Fantasy

Kaunas State Philharmonic Orchestra and Kaunas – European Capital of Culture 2022 present an exclusive international project with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The orchestra, visiting Kaunas for the first time, will present a special programme for the European Capital of Culture audience, together with the Kaunas State Choir and piano virtuoso Simon Trpčeski.

The first piece will be Sergei Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony”, created as a musical joke. When his contemporaries were already used to his “hooligan” style, he composed a symphony based on the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This is Prokofiev’s first work to be composed without the piano. Speaking about the title of the work, the composer said: “First of all, it’s simpler. Secondly, my mischievous way is to blame, I wanted to annoy the geese. And then there’s the secret hope that in the end I’ll be right – that the symphony will indeed become a classical work.”

A genius improviser, a creator of perfect musical castles in front of the audience, and a demanding artist in his own right – all these epithets applied to Ludwig van Beethoven fit perfectly into one work – Fantasia for piano, choir and orchestra, which the guests from London will perform with the Kaunas State Choir and pianist Simon Trpčeski. This soaring hymn to the spirits of creation has become a veritable herald of van Beethoven’s legendary Symphony No.9, which the audience will realise immediately after the winged melody of the piano solo.

The concert will culminate with the Second Symphony by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, a work whose birth the composer said: “It seems that the Most High Himself is throwing the pebbles of the mosaic from the vault of heaven and letting me put them together into one whole.” The symphony, which quickly captured the hearts of the audience, is a majestic and weighty mosaic of sounds, ending with an apotheosis that glorifies the work.