In the finals of the Lithuanian choir competition held on Saturday, the "Bel Canto" choir received the most points and won the first place. The competition commission awarded the "Bel Canto" choir 96.3 points, the highest among all choirs in Lithuania. Girls' choir "Virgo" (94 points) and Klaipėda mixed choir "Cantare" (92 points) also entered the top three choirs with the most points. Meanwhile, the commission decided to award the Grand Prize of the competition to the winners of the second place in the competition, the women's choir "Viva" (91.6 points).
This is the third time in a row that the choir "Bel Canto" has triumphed in this most important choir competition in the country: the choir won the most points and the first place in both 2013 and 2017. The Lithuanian Choir Competition organized by the National Cultural Center takes place every four years. Its purpose is to assess the artistic level of choirs and announce the best in Lithuania.
"The secret of our choir's success is friendly, talented, motivated choristers and the desire to be better than ever before. We have always been an ambitious, open and disruptive community, so I never doubted for a minute the success of my team. Only together with each chorister, by discussing and carefully analyzing the rehearsals, we raised our performance to another, higher artistic level. We would not have achieved this result without the wonderful artistic team, which made a great contribution to our success - choirmasters Raminta Gocentienė and Stase Žaltauskaitė-Malūnavičienė and vocal pedagogues Eimantas Bešėnas and Eglė Stundžiaitė. I am extremely grateful and happy to be able to work, play music and constantly improve with this unique choir. In the choir of all of us," says the artistic director and conductor of the Bel Canto choir, Milda Švelnienė.
The international commission worked in the final of the Lithuanian adult choir competition: composer and conductor Vaclovs Augustinas, conductor Jan Schumacher (Germany), conductor Anna Moniuszko (Poland), composer Zita Bružaitė and conductor Modestas Barkauskas. This year, 20 choirs of the first category competed in the final of the competition.
