Gabrielius Alekna, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra & Christopher Lyndon-Gee
Biography Gabrielius Alekna, Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra & Christopher Lyndon-Gee
Gabrielius Alekna
has built a prolific performance and recording career bridging the cultures of his birth country of Lithuania and his present home of the United States. A graduate of The Juilliard School (Doctor of Musical Arts), Alekna was awarded Second Prize at the 2005 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna, Austria.
His performance credits include solo recitals at the United Nations Office in Geneva, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and concerto appearances with the Vienna Radio Symphony, Juilliard, and Bilkent Symphony Orchestras as well as with every major orchestra and ensemble in his native Lithuania.
His recordings are issued on the Ondine, Toccata Classics, and Naxos labels, and include the most comprehensive Bacevičius catalogue of any pianist, including many first recordings.
The Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO)
was established in 1940 by the composer, conductor and pianist Balys Dvarionas. The orchestra presents around 50 concerts annually in the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall and across Lithuania. It has also performed in some of the most prestigious international concert venues, such as the Musikverein Wien, the philharmonic halls of Cologne and Berlin, and the Barbican Centre in London.
The basis of the LNSO’s rich repertoire consists of oratorios and symphonies from various epochs, as well as modern contemporary music, with an emphasis on well-known works by Lithuanian composers and also first symphonies by many young composers. Since 1991, the LNSO has regularly participated in the GAIDA contemporary music festival. The orchestra also presents music by Lithuanian composers on Euroradio broadcasts.
The LNSO’s discography includes numerous releases on the Ondine, Accentus, Marco Polo, Col Legno, Ella Records, Naxos and Avie Records labels. Modestas Pitrėnas has served as artistic director and principal conductor since 2015. Robertas Šervenikas is the orchestra’s second conductor, and Juozas Domarkas is honorary conductor.
Christopher Lyndon-Gee
is known worldwide for his catalogue of many dozens of recordings, almost all of these since 1994 with Naxos. These include the complete orchestral music of Igor Markevitch and of Edgard Varèse; most of the symphonies and orchestral works of George Rochberg (a project still in progress); and, since their first collaborations in Kyiv in 2016, recordings of music by Valentin Silvestrov. Other prize-winning recordings include the music of Hans Werner Henze, Ottorino Respighi, Dmitry Shostakovich, Larry Sitsky (his opera The Golem), Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Bliss and Richard Strauss.
His musicianship has been recognised by the Sydney Critics ‘Best Conductor’ award for his work with the then Australian Opera (now Opera Australia), by five GRAMMY Award nominations, multiple nominations for other major awards such as Cannes and Echo Klassik; and by the Pizzicato Prize in Luxembourg.
His history and close associations with many orchestras include Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, England, Australia, the United States, Lithuania, the Republic of Georgia, Russia, France, Switzerland, the Havana Philharmonic (Cuba), and the Kyiv Philharmonic, Presidential Orchestra and Kyiv Chamber Orchestra in Ukraine.
Primarily a composer, Lyndon-Gee won the Onassis Prize in Athens for his ballet score Il poeta muore (‘The Poet Dies’), based on the life of Pier Paolo Pasolini and on Loris Jacopo Bononi’s book of the same title. The Australian National Critics awarded him ‘Artist of the Year’ for his choral-orchestral Hymn for Sarum: Te Deum; and, also in Australia, he won the Spivakovsky prize for his Poema per Gaspara Stampa, honouring Italy’s great 16th-century female poet. Numerous other works led to two MacDowell Fellowships in the USA; to a Paul Sacher Foundation Fellowship, and (for his writing about music) to multiple Visiting Scholar invitations to the Berenson Library at Villa I Tatti, Florence.
He is currently working on a concerto for violin that will be entitled Mémorial pour Pierre, slated for its premiere in November 2025 in Vilnius.
