Harp and Flute: The Enchanting Sound

The enchanting combination of harp and flute is the key of this programme presented by the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra and featuring two stage partners: charming French harpist Anaïs Gaudemard and renowned Swiss flautist and conductor Kaspar Zehnder. This talented and versatile musician frequently appears at major European concert venues and festivals. He has been appointed Artistic Director of the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra (Switzerland) for seven seasons in a row and Chief Conductor of the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra (The Czech Republic) since January 2018. For twenty years he has served as Artistic Director of the prestigious Murten Classics festival where the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra has the honour to participate for the third time this coming summer. Zehnder has also several times returned to the Klaipėda Concert Hall as a guest conductor and soloist with the orchestras, as well as chamber musician.

Anaïs Gaudemard will pay her first visit to Klaipėda. She is currently considered one the best harpists and brilliant musicians of the new generation. An internationally recognised soloist, she has garnered several important prizes, which embarked her on a fast-paced career, with regular appearances at major venues, such as the Wiener Konzerthaus, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Kölner Philharmonie, Barbican Center London, Philharmonie de Paris, Philharmonie du Luxembourg, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, BOZAR Brussels, Konserthuset Stockholm and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw among others.

The remarkable soloists will join the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra in the performances of Mozart’s Concerto for flute, harp and orchestra. The programme will also include the gem of the harp repertoire – Claude Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane for harp and orchestra. The KCO will seize an opportunity to demonstrate its professionalism by performing Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht (The Transfigured Night). This programmatic work by the founder of the New Viennese School was inspired by Richard Dehmel’s poem of the same name. It was included in his collection of poems, entitled Weib und Welt (Woman and World), and described a man and a woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. Two people who had been close some time ago became alienated from each other. And now a woman tells him about her adultery, while a man comforts her and, fascinated by the beauty of the moonlit night, forgives her. The barren night becomes transformed by hope and devotion…