The musical rendezvous of chamber orchestra Sinfonietta Rīga with its artistic partner Jörg Widmann are always emotionally stirring and resonate in the memory long after. This time the Bavarian is visiting Latvia together with his talented sister Carolin Widmann - the world-famous violinist with whom, as a child, he discovered the magic of chamber music and made the first attempts at composition. Maybe it is no coincidence that musically gifted sisters played a big role also in the lives of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn - the two musical prodigies admired by Widmann.
This bright and hopeful programme, full of longing for spring, features Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, a masterpiece of its genre. Along with it, Widmann has included the starry-eyed Romantic composer's Symphony No. 10, written in Mendelssohn's teenage years, and his own Paraphrase on the iconic Wedding March for solo violin. Continuing to reveal new facets in the ostensibly familiar works of Mozart, Widmann brings attention to Viennese master's Symphony No. 39 that to this day is veiled in mystery. The hidden and subconscious matters are of interest to the acclaimed contemporary Lithuanian composer Juste Janulytė - her mesmerizing opus Sleeping Patterns investigates the phenomenon of sleep.