Vestards Šimkus, piano

Roberts Rubīns, video

Programme: Pēteris Vasks, ‘The Seasons’ piano cycle

This year’s Pēteris Vasks Festival features a repeated performance of the 2016 Cēsis Concert Hall multi-media production of Vasks’ piano cycle ‘The Seasons’ where the musical interpretation by the brilliant pianist Vestards Šimkus is complemented by Roberts Rubīns’ animated projections of the most beautiful works by the classical Latvian painter Vilhelms Purvītis ‒ Latvian landscapes of all four seasons.

1980 saw Pēteris Vasks write his ‘White Scenery’. A year later came ‘Autumn Music’. In 1995 premiered his ‘Spring Music’. It was in the winter of 2009 that Maestro completed the score painting the one missing season ‒ summer. In Vasks’ piano cycle, autumn is late sunshine and transparent cobweb threads. Winter is white like a January morning when snow has covered everything that is dirty. Spring is the first dripping icicles and first bird songs. Summer is infinite joy transformed into a serene scene: Midsummer Night revellers have finally gone to bed; early on Midsummer Day’s morning, flower wreaths are slowly floating down the river that carries them to the sea.