Margarita Balanas and the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra

Participating

Margarita Balanas (cello)

Liepāja Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Douglas Bostock

Programme

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) Cello Concerto

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) A London Symphony

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) Phantastes Suite

Internationally acclaimed Latvian cellist Margarita Balanas, together with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, invites you to an evening where the styles of three early 20th-century British composers will intertwine. At the conductor’s podium will be British maestro Douglas Bostock.

At the heart of the evening is Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the composer’s central late work and one of the most significant pieces in the cello repertoire.

The cello concerto was written after the First World War, while the composer was staying in a secluded country house in Sussex. The closeness of nature and isolation from the noise of the city and the war, combined with awareness of the devastation caused by the war, contributed to Elgar’s stylistic shift toward a more austere, concentrated, and introspective expression.

In academic literature, Elgar’s Cello Concerto is often interpreted as a farewell work. During its creation, the health of the composer’s wife, Alice, had significantly worsened, and less than a year after the work’s premiere, she passed away.

After the death of his wife, Elgar’s creative activity practically came to a halt. Over the following 14 years of his life, he no longer created any major works, and researchers quite rightly connect this directly with the loss of his wife.

In this performance of the work with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, Margarita Balanas will take the stage, a cellist whom critics describe as one of the brightest of her generation.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony is one of the most important British symphonic works of the early 20th century, marking the composer’s transition from a nationally romantic style to broader symphonic thinking.

Although Vaughan Williams himself stressed that the work is not programmatic, the symphony clearly evokes London elements, Westminster bell motifs, echoes of street musicians, and the city’s rhythmic tension, organically woven into the symphonic material as timbral or rhythmic impulses.

The symphony holds a special place in the history of British music not only for its ambitious form, but also for its aesthetic program: in it, Vaughan Williams affirms the belief that national identity in music can be expressed not only through the direct use of folk music quotations, but also through the harmonic thinking and flow of time in musical language.

Gustav Holst’s Phantastes Suite will meet listeners in Liepāja for the first time since its premiere back in 1912.

As conductor Douglas Bostock points out, after this one performance Holst withdrew the work and removed it from his official catalogue of works, considering it an artistically imperfect realization of an idea. As a result, the Phantastes Suite has remained outside the concert repertoire, unlike other works by Holst from the same period, which later became established in the canon.

The suite illuminates Holst as a composer in the process of searching: vivid symphonic colours, rhythmic vitality, and an experimental form intertwine in it, pointing to ideas that would later develop in more mature works. Thus, it provides valuable insight into the formative stage of the composer’s creative language and offers a rare opportunity to become acquainted with a lesser-known but important page of British symphonic music.

INFORMATION FOR VISITORS:

The concert uses an extended stage, so in practice row 5 is the 1st audience row.

Discounts:

Students, disabled persons, pensioners - 5 euros

Schoolchildren - 50%

3+ family card holders - 30%

Companion of a person with disability group I/II - 50%

Groups (10 or more visitors) - 20%

When purchasing group tickets online, please write to sales@lso.lv

When attending the concert, visitors must present a document proving eligibility for the discount.

Useful:

The concert is accessible to people with hearing impairments, as the induction loop function will be activated during the performance. Based on the experience expressed by people with hearing impairments when testing this system, the best listening experience is available in the center section of the stalls from rows 5 to 12, seats 6 to 28.

The concert is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, the State Culture Capital Foundation, and the City of Liepāja.