ČELLO CĒSIS | Concert Hall Cesis season opening

Giovanni Sollima /cello, Italy/

Ēriks Kiršfelds /cello/

Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra

Conductor Modestas Pitrėnas

The Italian cello player Giovanni Sollima is a classical musician who enjoys the status of a rock star, a Jimi Hendrix of the orchestral world who has breathed new life into the musical instrument familiar to the world for over 300 years ‒ the cello. His music is much loved by a wide audience, from confirmed aficionados of academic music to heavy metal fans. Sollima conquers the hearts of them all! His musical pieces are rich in Mediterranean rhythms and very Italian melodies. He is bringing to Cēsis two of his compositions ‒ Folktales and Violoncellez, vibrez!.

Born in Sicily to a family of musicians, the composer and cellist studied in his native Palermo and later ‒ in Stuttgart and the Salzburg Mozarteum. Sollima has appeared with some of the greatest musicians and conductors both at the world’s best concert halls and completely non-academic venues.
Sollima writes for both acoustic and electronic instruments, frequently built with his own hands. His career has seen him work with giants like Peter Greenaway, Robert Wilson, John Turturro and others.

Of the cello, Sollima says:

‘When I was born my father used to play in a cello/piano duo with my first teacher Giovanni Perriera, so the cello was a very strong ‘presence’ for me from a very early age and – as my mother tells me – I spent hours listening to rehearsals, only crying and screaming when those rehearsals ended! The cello [seemed] irresistibly fascinating for me, Maybe it was an obsession too... [..]Important for me also is even the position the cello assumes with one’s own body – one covers about 80% of it. [..] I don’t regard myself as a ‘real’ composer (in the traditional sense): I am a cellist and I work on the cello. My approach to composition is more like improvisation, and I proceed from block to block improvising, then I write it down in notation.’