Candlelight piano concert by Ugnius Pauliukonis at St Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile, with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and other Christmas pieces.
Ugnius Pauliukonis plays St Giles' Cathedral on Friday 18 December, as part of the cathedral's Evening Concert Series. It's a candlelight performance, so the piano sits inside the Gothic architecture of the building on the Royal Mile, rather than under the usual bright lights. St Giles' is a Church of Scotland parish church in the Old Town, with parts dating back to the 14th and 16th centuries.
The programme is built around Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which gives the evening its name. Around it, Pauliukonis pulls from a few different eras: Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata op.13, Bach's Sheep May Safely Slumber, Liszt's Sonetto del Petrarca 123, Tchaikovsky's December from The Seasons, and Debussy's Clair de Lune. It's a mix of the well-known and the slightly more tucked-away, and it's worth keeping in mind that the set isn't confirmed for this edition, so it might shift a bit by the time the night actually rolls around.
Pauliukonis is a British concert pianist, teacher and performance art curator who's played as a soloist with the BBC Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and the Kaunas State Symphony Orchestra. He's performed at the Bridgewater Hall, Wigmore Hall in London and the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and he works as a chamber musician too. He's also the driving force behind Glasgow Piano Days, a free piano event initiative that brings music into hospitals, museums and public spaces across Glasgow.
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The concert runs from 18:15 to 19:15, so it's a focused hour of piano in the evening rather than a long haul. St Giles' Cathedral is on the High Street in the Old Town, right on the Royal Mile, which makes it easy to get to on foot if you're already in the centre.
