Margarita Balanas and Liepāja Symphony Orchestra

Featuring: 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 and the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra invite you to an evening featuring the musical styles of three early 20th-century British composers. British maestro Douglas Bostock will take the podium.

At the heart of the evening is Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, a central work of the composer’s late period and one of the most significant pieces in the cello repertoire. Margarita Balanas, whom critics describe as one of the most brilliant cellists of her generation, will perform it with the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony is one of the most significant British symphonic works of the early 20th century, marking the composer’s transition from national romanticism to a broader symphonic outlook.

Gustav Holst’s Phantastes Suite will meet audiences in Liepāja for the first time since its premiere in 1912. As conductor Douglas Bostock notes, after that sole performance Holst withdrew the work and removed it from his official catalogue, considering it an artistically unrealised idea. As a result, Phantastes Suite has remained outside the concert repertoire, unlike other works by Holst from that period, which later became part of the canon.