On 17 February at 18:00, at the Liepāja Concert Hall “Great Amber”, the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra will perform Symphony No.5 “Sinfonia E” written by Andris Vecumnieks, composer and professor of Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music (“JVLMA”). At the concert the composer himself will stand at the conductor's desk.
Previously in his artistic work the composer has rather created a synthesis between the sequential number and the pitch instead of numbering the symphony genre, thus the fifth symphony is written in E major and, considering that in music letter E is used for the mi note, the work was named “Sinfonia E”.
“Just like Sinfonia C, Sinfonia E was also created at the initiative of the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, and this time it was intended as a future self-dedication for my 60th birthday,” says Mr.Vecumnieks. “The themed concept of the Sea and Kurzeme in the context of the parallel view and interconnection of world music masterpieces signifies the importance and place of Latvian music in the music culture. Before that, the organically appropriate version of the Wave Song by Jāzeps Vītols will be performed in Gaitis Jānis Pujāts’ instrumentation.”
In the second part of the concert, the “Unanswered Question” by Charles Ives will organically fuse with and be followed by Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.4 in G major with soloist Reinis Zariņš playing the piano.
“A question will be asked, but will the answer follow?” says Mr. Vecumnieks about the concert programme, referring to what the composer Juris Karlsons has said, stating that “the art is here to ask questions, rather than to give answers”, therefore each listener should search for the answers on their own.
Andris Vecumnieks is a lecturer at the Department of Composition, Orchestral Conducting and Musicology at JVLMA, a guest professor at the Latvian Academy of Culture and Daugavpils University, he regularly gives master classes both in Latvia and abroad.
As a conductor, he has given more than 400 concerts in Latvia and abroad, including Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Georgia, Azerbaijan and elsewhere. The composer has established regular cooperation with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra.
Mr.Vecumnieks is the artistic director of the orchestra “Sinfonia Concertante” founded by himself, a long-term conductor of the symphony orchestra of the Emīls Dārziņš Music School, from 2004 until 2018 he was the class teacher and artistic director of the JVLMA Symphony Orchestra.
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