On 26 March, conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s debut at the head of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra began the Lithuanian cultural season in Bavaria. True to the motto of this season, Without Distance (Ohne Distanz), the concert was attended not only by a massive audience of the radio station BR-Klassik and online media channels but also Lithuanian music lovers who were able to easily cover 1 500 kilometres to Munich by tuning into the broadcast of the LRT radio station Klasika.

“Today, there are very few female conductors who would be as popular and as eagerly invited by orchestras around the world as Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla. Born in Vilnius in 1986, this Lithuanian musician was only 29 years old when she became the chief conductor of the Birmingham City Symphony Orchestra in 2016,” said Bavarian Radio in the press release. In 2019, the radio station Classic FM selected M. Gražinytė-Tyla as the best female conductor in the world.

The concert was opened by Symphony No. 2 by Mieczysław Weinberg as Gražinytė-Tyla continues her mission to acquaint the world with the legacy of this undeservedly forgotten composer of Polish-Jewish origin (for this piece, the conductor won the Deutsche Grammophone Classical Music Record of the Year award last year). A comrade of Dmitry Shostakovich, Weinberg is called a symbol of the tragedies of the 20th century: he was persecuted by both fascist and Stalinist regimes. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra had an opportunity to delve into Weinberg’s score for the first time in its history. The symphony written in 1946 reveals an impressive amplitude of expression of string instruments.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s overture no. 3 Leonora presented Weinberg’s symphony in the context of freedom and dictatorship. Between these two works, Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi performed the last and most popular concerto K. 595 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

The live broadcast of the concert by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra took place on 26 March at 21:30 Lithuanian time on BR-KLASSIK. The concert at the Herkulessaal in Munich was also streamed on the br-klassik.de/concert website. The concert was simultaneously broadcast to the Lithuanian audience by LRT radio station Klasika.

The project Without Distance: Lithuanian Culture in Bavaria 2021 (in German: Ohne Distanz: Litauische Kultur in Bayern 2021) will be continued in the summer and autumn by live, online or hybrid events not only in Munich but also in other Bavarian cities, namely, Augsburg, Blaibach, Ingolstadt, Nuremberg and Würzburg. A varied programme of music, literature, visual arts, performances and theatre by the most prominent Lithuanian artists and performers will be presented and artists residencies will be held within the cultural season.

The project is organised by the Lithuanian Culture Institute and the Lithuanian Cultural Attaché in Germany in cooperation with the Lithuanian Embassy in Germany and partners in Lithuania and Bavaria. The project is funded by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture.