“Voices from Heaven” is a special concert dedicated to honoring the innocent victims of the war in Ukraine: children, artists, women, and civilians whose voices our world no longer hears. This musical program is a journey through pain, remembrance, and spiritual solace—a symbolic arch stretching from celestial purity to deep mourning, and ultimately, to illuminated hope.

Joining the Kauno City Symphony Orchestra on stage are Ukrainian soloists: soprano Kseniya Bakhriddinova-Kravchuk and baritone Pavlo Hryshchenko. The memorial concert will be conducted by Oksana Madarash, a Ukrainian conductor well-known to the Lithuanian public.

The evening begins with the Prelude to Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which sounds as if from another world—full of light and radiant harmony, inviting the listener to feel a sense of hope that carries the soul upward.

Gustav Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) is a work where the human voice expresses sorrow, the pain of loss, and tender memories of lives lost too soon with extraordinary intimacy. Every note opens the heart, inviting the listener into a space of empathy and remembrance.

One of the highlights of the evening is the Lithuanian premiere of “No Man is an Island” by Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva. This lyrical, deeply humanistic composition invites reflection on human connection, compassion, and shared existence. Poleva conveys with exceptional clarity the idea that every loss affects all of humanity; her music becomes a bridge between the hearts of the listeners and a universal sense of empathy.

The concert culminates with Richard Strauss’s monumental symphonic poem Tod und Verklärung. This grandiose composition transforms darkness into light and sorrow into transcendence, leading the listener toward inner peace and renewal. Every chord becomes a meditation on life, death, and the possibility of finding light even in the darkest moments.

“Voices from Heaven” is music as memory transformed into light. It is an evening where pain and beauty, loss and hope intertwine, and where the resonating voices unite souls, inspire compassion, and leave an enduring message of light and inner peace.

The concert invites the listener on a profound emotional and spiritual journey that leaves no one indifferent and enriches the inner world.

Program:

Richard Wagner – Prelude to the opera Lohengrin

Gustav Mahler – Kindertotenlieder 

Victoria Poleva – No Man is an Island (Lithuanian Premiere)

Richard Strauss – Tod und Verklärung