Closing Concert / Perpetuum Mobile

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Perpetuum Mobile

The festival’s final evening forms a sweeping meditation on movement, memory, and the cyclical nature of musical time. Three works—each radically different in language and intention—are brought into a conversation that reveals how music can travel between centuries, aesthetics, and emotional worlds while remaining in perpetual motion. At the heart of the programme stands Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975)  Symphony No. 15, here performed in Viktor Derevianko’s remarkable chamber arrangement for violin, cello, piano, and percussion (Op. 141a). Shostakovich’s last symphony is often described as a musical self-portrait: a work in which the composer reflects on a lifetime of artistic struggle through a tapestry of quotations and allusions. The famous opening gesture—Rossini’s William Tell overture rendered with almost toy-like playfulness—immediately establishes a world where irony and sincerity constantly collide. Wagnerian motifs loom in the later movements like distant, half-remembered spectres, while the percussion writing evokes a skeletal, ritualistic stillness. In Derevianko’s reduced scoring, these layers become even more exposed. The chamber texture strips away symphonic mass to reveal a music of startling intimacy: brittle, transparent, and emotionally direct. The result is not merely a smaller version of the symphony, but a new prism through which Shostakovich’s late style can be heard with rare clarity.

Giya Kancheli’s  (1935–2019) Eine kleine Daneliade could hardly provide a more contrasting vision. Kancheli—one of Georgia’s most distinctive musical voices—constructs his works around extremes: long, contemplative silences suddenly ruptured by eruptions of sound; gentle lyricism set against dark, monumental sonorities. This piece, written with the composer’s signature sense of theatre, unfolds like a series of enigmatic episodes. Its title, with its playful nod to Mozart, conceals a deeply personal miniature in which humour, melancholy, and spiritual distance coexist in precarious balance. Kancheli’s treatment of time is almost cinematic: the music seems to breathe, hover, and then accelerate without warning, as though responding to an inner narrative never explicitly stated. Within the context of this programme, Daneliade becomes a bridge between Shostakovich’s coded introspection and Strauss’s carefree brilliance—an interlude of mystery suspended between two worlds.

The evening—and the festival—concludes with Johann Strauss II’s Perpetuum Mobile, a perfect embodiment of the Austrian genius for musical wit. Presented here not merely as a light encore but as an integral part of the programme’s architecture, Strauss’s playful “musical joke” transforms repetition into a source of delight. Built on a simple fragment that appears to chase its own tail, the piece creates the illusion of endless forward propulsion. In the context of this closing concert, it becomes more than an elegant miniature: it offers a gently humorous commentary on the idea of circularity that threads through the entire evening. Where Shostakovich confronts the weight of musical history and Kancheli suspends time altogether, Strauss lets it spin freely—light, effortless, and charmingly self-aware.

Together, these works form a richly layered conclusion to the festival: a journey from existential reflection to poetic ambiguity and finally to exuberant play. A true perpetuum mobile of musical imagination, bringing the festival to a close with both depth and delight.

Programme and performers

Dmitri Shostakovich (arr. Viktor Derevianko): Symphony No. 15 for violin, cello, piano and percussion

Milan Pala – violin, Jiří Bárta – cello, Terezie Fialová – piano/celesta,
Martin Opršál, Martin Kleibl, David Paša – percussion

Giya Kancheli: Little Daneliada (Eine kleine Daneliade)

Johann Strauss II: Perpetuum Mobile, Op. 257

Milan Pala, Daniel Matejča, Richard Kollert, Jan Novák – violin,
Karel Untermüller, Bohumil Bohdarenko – viola, Jiří Bárta, Josef Bárta – cello,
Indi Stivín – double bass, Terezie Fialová – piano