VII Cello Cēsis International festival will take place over two weekends in September, opening on 18 September with a programme of alternative music Cello Cēsis Ambient; it will be followed by a number of concerts between 24 and 26 September with appearances by guest solo musicians, both experienced and representing the younger generation of cello players, from Poland, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Latvia.

Saturday, 18 September 2021 at 19:00

CELLO CĒSIS AMBIENT

TAER_ Sebastian Plano&Tom Adams, Resina, Margarita Balanas&Ensamble

The seventh edition of Cello Cēsis International festival opens with an innovative alternative programme that will strike a chord both with lovers of classical values and listeners whose musical taste and previous concert experience may have been somewhat different. Three concert programmes, each reflecting a different musical genre and a different musical quest, will be presented on a single night.

The tandem Sebastian Plano (a Berlin-based Argentine composer and cellist) and Tom Adams (a composer and pianist from the UK) promises a programme combining minimalism, electronic and acoustic music). Regular concertgoers in Cēsis will remember them from 2019, when both artists appeared with their solo programmes in the Ambiente Stage series of recitals. Their collaboration started several years ago when Plano produced an album by Adams. This year, the two musicians will present their joint project ‘TAER’. Multi-instrumental-sounding, atmospheric, intimate and lyrical: that is how we could describe the cello sound we will hear on this Saturday evening.

Alongside the ambient set by Plano and Adams, we will also hear the latest programme by the Polish composer, cellist and representative of the independent music scene Resina, created in association with the percussion maestro Mateusz Rychlicki. After graduating from the Gdańsk Academy of Music, Resina has embraced the alternative movement and has been an active contributor to the Polish independent music since 2000. Resina’s music is experimental, unpredictable, emotionally resonant and vibrant. The cello, sound loops, electronics, percussion and the artist’s vocals ‒ together, all of that creates a unique, vivid and electrified sound where the structure of the musical piece coexists with improvisation.

The third artist taking part in Cello Cēsis Ambient is the cellist Margarita Balanas, a frequent guest at the festival. The concept of her new programme entitled ‘1920’ was developed in collaboration with the Scottish composer Lucie Treacher; it will feature a premiere of Treacher’s new piece, ‘Portals’; it was written especially for Cello Cēsis. The piece is unique in that it is interrupted by theatrical elements that will take the listener on a journey to the 1920s, where quotations from Stravinsky, Gershwin and Ravel, as well as jazz and blues will serve as the musical means of expression. The music in the programme is arranged for a specific ensemble that includes the cello, percussion, piano and double bass.

Friday, 24 September 2021 at 19:00

LNSO AND DVOŘÁK’S CELLO CONCERTO

Kristaps Bergs, cello

Latvian National symphony orchestra

Conductor ‒ Maxim Emelyanychev / Russia

Programme: Antonín Dvořák, Cello Concerto; Jean Sibelius, Symphony No. 5

Kristaps Bergs, who has already conquered some of the world’s most prestigious stages, is admired for his skill to mesmerise the listeners, almost take them to another world; Bergs owes this ability to his painstaking approach to each piece of music, always exploring all there is to know about it. The young maestro Maxim Emelyanychev’s musical career has started in an equally brilliant manner; after charming everybody with his debut concerts, he is now known as a witty and stylish conductor who is able to keep his audience captivated from the first note to the final one. The two will meet in Dvořák’s melodious and magnificent Cello Concerto and a youthful rendering of Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony, the finale of which was inspired by the composer’s encounter with a flock of regal and graceful swans in the sky.

Saturday, 25 September 2021 at 19:00

CELLO CĒSIS. GIOVANNI SOLLIMA. (un)TRADITIONAL

In Saturday night's concert for the first time in Latvia we will hear the Italian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima. He is a classical musician who enjoys the status of a rock star, a Jimi Hendrix of the orchestral world who has breathed new life into the musical instrument familiar to the world for over 300 years ‒ the cello. His music is much loved by a wide audience, from confirmed aficionados of academic music to alternative music lovers.

He has collaborated with conductors such as Ricardo Mutti and orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Berlin Konzerthausorchester and many others. He has composed music for Peter Greenaway, John Turturro, Bob Wilson.

Sollima is known for creating an original arrangements of classical music masterpieces and rock music hits. His solo programs are "crazy" and various - from baroque to rock and from world music to his own compositions.

In Cēsis we will also enjoy Giovanni Sollima's solo programme where Bach’s and Stravinsky's compositions will be performed along side with Italian folk melodies and Jimi Hendrix's hits for cello.

Sunday, 26 September, 2021 at 16:00

CELLO JAZZ

LARS DANIELSSON, MARGARITA BALANAS and the LATVIAN RADIO BIG BAND

Larss Danielsson, cello, double bass

Margarita Balanas, cello

Latvian Radio Big Band

The festival’s closing concert on Sunday afternoon will reveal yet another new facet of the cello’s sound, this time ‒ in a jazz mood: the programme features music foe the cello with big band and cello with wind orchestra. The first part of the concert will be an opportunity for the listeners of Cello Cēsis to meet one of the world’s most sought-after Swedish cello and double bass players Lars Danielsson, whose style is defined by his love for classical music and his passion for jazz. Danielsson’s repertoire always includes both some pieces for the cello, which is the foundation of his classical musical training, and for double bass, an instrument that acquires a more melodious and lyrical voice in his hands than in performances by other acclaimed musicians. In Cēsis, Danielsson will appear with the Latvian Radio Big Band.

The second part of the concert will feature the 1980 Concerto for Cello and Wind Orchestra by the flamboyant Austrian composer Friedrich Gulda ‒ a composition frequently paraphrasing the Viennese classics, popular flamenco pieces and rock hits. During his life, Friedrich Gulda, the author of the piece chosen by Margarita Balanas, had a knack for surprising people both with his personality and his music. He had a habit of appearing at his recitals wearing the same clothes he would choose for his private rave parties; music critics would describe his dress style as one befitting ‘a Serbian pimp’.