Celebrating the 150th jubilee of Rainis, on September 10, the first performance of new musical-poetic concert production ‘Dagda’s Sketchbooks’ will be presented in St. Peter’s Church, created by singer Ieva Parša, director Uģis Brikmanis, and musicologist Orests Silabriedis.
Premiere of works of eight Latvian composers will combine with readings of Rainis’ poems. The new compositions are created by composers belonging to several generations and known for quite varied creative style – Maija Einfelde (1939), Pēteris Plakidis (1947), Mārīte Dombrovska (1977), Gundega Šmite (1977), Andris Dzenītis (1978), Oskars Herliņš (1980), Santa Bušs (1981), and Jēkabs Jančevskis (1992).

Singers Ieva Parša and Krišjānis Norvelis will add their voices to this cultural performance, accompanied by one of the most outstanding concert masters in Latvia, JVLMA professor of chamber music Aldis Liepiņš. The sound of viola will be added to this new stage event by musician of LNSO and quartet ‘Quadra’ Pēteris Trasuns. The trumpet will be played by musician playing for LNSO as well as for ‘Sinfonietta Riga’ and recognized as the best interpret of classical trumpet music in Latvia today, Jānis Porietis.

‘Dagda’s Sketchbooks’ is one of the most fragile and mysterious poetry collections Rainis has authored. A writer, named Dagda, contemplates, muses, travels away and returns, is in the state of love, and registers all this experience. Rainis defines this work as a novel in poem form. And we can gather who is his literary hero – so open and inscrutable, so touchingly awkward and high-up-on-wings creative.

Each of composers had a chance to select any of the poems from the ‘sketch-book’ collection. By the spring it was clear that composers’ attention had predominantly been turned to the collections ‘Addio, bella’ and ‘Going Home’.

A significant part of ‘Dagda’s Sketchbooks’ production is video set design – the images, captured on the banks of the Jaša river, in Jasmuiža, the fabled place of Rainis’ early youth, and almost underwater swimming all the way across river Daugava on the Dunava crossing, not far from Rainis’ childhood home in Tadenava, as well as shots from train window on the journey across Sēlija and Latgale.

The authors of concert production have collaborated before, creating the chamber performances ‘Brightly Shining Latvian Grey’ and ‘Dūdieviņš.’