Opening concert of the festival. Mūza Rubackytė presents the programme "From the Baltic to the Adriatic".

The legendary Lithuanian pianist Mūza Rubackytė subtly combines different epochs and cultures in this programme, revealing the harmony of musical mastery and history.

The stage diva, who has amassed a vast repertoire in her arsenal, has chosen a very delicate and at the same time technically demanding programme for the opening concert of the 13th International M. K. Čiurlionis Festival, which will be held at the Palanga Kurhaus Concert Hall, where she will pay special attention to Čiurlionis, who is celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth. The work of this Lithuanian genius combines music, painting and literature to create a special atmosphere, which M. Rubackytė will reveal with her characteristic delicacy. The concert will also feature works by Leopold Godowski, one of the best pianists of all time, who was born in Žasliai, and will be perfectly matched by the painterly opuses of the contemporary composer Raminta Šerkšnytė, and will culminate in the most beautiful movements of Ferenc Liszt's cycle The Year of Wanderings.

The programme "From the Baltic to the Adriatic", performed by Mūza Rubackytė, is an intriguing musical journey through different eras and countries.
 

Programme

Part I

M. K. Čiurlionis (1875 - 1911) - Three Preludes and Two Nocturnes

Leopold Godowsky (1870 - 1938) - Sonata in E minor

Raminta Šerkšnytė (born 1975) - Tales for keyboard

Ferenc Liszt (1811 - 1886) - Notebook for the second part of the piano cycle The Year of Wanderings

Venice and Naples (S 162):

The Gondolier

Song

Tarantella
 

Part II

Ferenc Liszt (1811 - 1886) - Fountains of the Villa d'Este from Book III of the piano cycle The Year of Wanderings.

Sonata in B minor
 

****

Mūza Rubackytė, who was born in Lithuania and currently lives in Vilnius, Paris and Geneva, is a pianist who actively performs on all continents, in the world's most renowned concert halls and with the world's greatest conductors and orchestras. She studied at the Lithuanian Conservatoire (now the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, LAMT) and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire. After winning the All-Union Competition, she was recognised as one of the best pianists in the USSR, and in 1981 won the prestigious International Liszt-Bartók Piano Competition in Budapest. For seven years Rubatsky was forbidden to travel outside the USSR, as a result of which she was unable to fulfil any of the numerous prestigious contracts she had signed in the West. When the opportunity arose, in 1989 she was already on a traineeship in Paris, and in 1990 she became the winner of the International French Music Competition "Les Grand Maîtres Français" in Paris.

Today she performs on every continent. Her tours have taken her to prestigious venues in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Mexico and Japan, as well as to exotic destinations such as Morocco, Malaysia, Singapore, Mozambique and the islands of Bermuda, Martinique and Puerto Rico. She is invited every year to perform at the Paris Opera, and her recitals have been given in renowned concert halls such as London's Wigmore Hall, Bonn's Beethoven-Haus, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw and the Brussels Conservatory, Paris' Salle Gaveau, Tivoli's Villa d'Este, Buenos Aires' Teatro Colón, Mexico City's Auditorio Blas Galant, the Santiago Opera House, Rio de Janeiro's Teatro Municipal, the Cairo Opera House, Tokyo's Casals Hall and others. Rubackytė has performed with many top-class orchestras in the USA, and has collaborated with the Teatro Municipal in Santiago, the Symphony Orchestras of Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, Moscow Tchaikovsky and Lausanne. The composer Penderecki has regularly invited Mūza Rubackytė to perform his piano concerto Resurrection, dedicated to the victims of 9/11, and she conducted the maestro in Resurrection in Bogotá in 2016 and at his 85th anniversary celebrations in Warsaw.

The pianist has also been awarded the Medal of Honour "For Merits to Lithuanian Culture", the Order of the Grand Duke Gediminas by President A. Brazauskas, the Lithuanian Identity Prize "Lithuanian Muse" by President V. Adamkus in 2006. In 2006, M. Rubackytė was awarded the Lithuanian Government Prize, the Lithuanian National Prize for Culture and Art, and in 2018, President Grybauskaitė presented her with the Grand Commander's Cross for her services to Lithuania. In 2012, the pianist was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica Prize by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture for her promotion of Liszt's legacy worldwide. She is also President of the Liszt Association "LisztTuania".

The festival is organised by the public institution "Klasika LT".