On September 18 at 7 pm, Tartu Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra, conducted by music director Mihkel Kütson, performs in Tartu Vanemuine Concert Hall. The season opening concert program consists of Antonín Dvořák’s Cello Concerto in B minor, op 104, soloist Indrek Leivategija, and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op 73. The concert is organized in cooperation of the State Concert Institute Eesti Kontsert and the Vanemuine Theatre.
Indrek Leivategija has graduated from the Heino Eller Tartu Music School and studied in the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. At the moment he studies in the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich in Wen-Sinn Yangs cello class. Leivategija has received acknowledgements and awards at many competitions and performed repeatedly in Denmark, Finland and Germany. He has played with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Vanemuine Symphony Orchestra and Estonian National Opera Symphony Orchestra and he is a member of String Quartet TetrArchi.
Mihkel Kütson has studied conducting at the Estonian Academy of Music and graduated from the Hamburg Music and Theatre University with Professor Klauspeter Siebel in 2001. He has participated in master classes (Kurt Sanderling, Kurt Masur, Claus Peter Flor, Fabio Luisi, Peter Gülke and Bernhard Kontarsky) and won prizes at conducting competitions in Wroclaw, Weimar and Tallinn. Mihkel Kütson has won a reputable German Conductor Prize (Deutsches Dirigentenpreis) and worked in a number of significant German music theatres. Since the season 2007/2008, he has been the chief conductor of Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landestheater and Sinfonieorchester. From 1999 to 2004, Mihkel Kütson was a musical director and chief conductor of Vanemuine Orchestra, and since August 1, 2008 he holds the same post. He has conducted as a guest conductor Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra and orchestras in Germany (Berlin, Nuremberg, Hamburg, Bonn, and Dusseldorf), Ireland and Italy.
Aveli Kadastik