Cēsis Concert Hall is hosting the second Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival. The birthday month of the composer will be marked with festival concerts dedicated to the music of Vasks and a group of likeminded fellow composers. On 13 April, we will listen to instrumental chamber music and watch a ballet performance; the chamber orchestra programme on 14 April will present the premiere of violin concerto by the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür; on 20 April, the festival will be brought to a close with a multimedia project featuring Vasks’ piano cycle The Seasons and projected reproductions of landscapes by Vilhelms Purvītis.

Last year Cēsis Concert Hall launched a new musical festival dedicated to the great Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks. In a number of concerts, we had the opportunity to enjoy exclusively music written by Vasks for solo instruments, piano trio, choir and orchestra. The finale concert of the inaugural festival “Distant Ligh” was nominated for the Grand Music Award, the Latvias’ most prestigious national music award, in the Concert of the Year category.

The purpose of the festival is revealing the treasure that is the music of Pēteris Vasks, drawing to the event and the achievements of our national culture the attention of not only admirers of Vasks’ music in Latvia but also the European audiences, as well as music professionals. The high appreciation for the first festival and the nomination for the Grand Music Award is very significant and inspiring for us, and that is why this year we are ready to open the festival doors even wider. The programme will feature scores not only by Pēteris Vasks but also fellow composers who share Vasks’ creative mindset, presenting a vivid Baltic and Scandinavian musical palette. You can expect readings of the composer’s music in various art forms and genres ‒ instrumental music, the language of dance, in a visually poetic multimedia project.

Artistic Director of the Cēsis Concert Hall Inese Zagorska

The Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival is mounted working closely with the composer. He is the creator of the artistic content and a generator of ideas, present at each of the festival concerts.

As he was giving shape to the musical conception of the festival, Pēteris Vasks highlighted the mental affinity between the Latvian and Scandinavian composers, their shared musical worldview. And so the programme of the festival’s opening concert “BRothers” on 13 April 2019 will feature music by the composer most revered by Vasks, Arvo Pärt ‒ his composition Fratres, as well as the Swedish contemporary composer Albert Schnelzer’s Apollonian Dances and the Finnish composer Olli Mustonen’s Piano Quintet. Of Vasks’ own oeuvre, we will hear his Little Summer Music and Fourth String Quartet. The programme will be performed by the soloists of the Swedish O’Modernt Chamber Orchestra, known for their interest in new musical means of expression.

The evening concert “Vasks in Music and Dance” on Saturday, 13 April, will reveal Pēteris Vasks’ music from an unusual angle – in a contemporary ballet production. The German Bundesjugendballett (National Youth Ballet) founded by the world famous choreographer John Neumeier has staged a one-act ballet Muted set to a piece by Vasks’ for piano quartet. The music will be performed by Latvian musicians who will share the stage with the dancers. The ballet is built as a natural interplay between music and movement: the melody and the dance inspire, encourage and complement each other. The sadness and hope of Pēteris Vasks’ music is also reflected in Sasha Rivas’ choreography. In the second part of the night, the ballet company will treat the festival visitors to a programme set to masterpieces of classical music. Founded in 2011 in Hamburg, Bundesjugendballett comprises eight professional dancers. With their repertoire that creatively reflects the experiences, awareness and ideas of the younger generation, the company is an excellent mediator between contemporary culture and high art.

On Sunday, 14 April, in the “Lonely Angel. Meditation for violin and string orchestra” concert, the gift by the Swedish chamber orchestra to the Latvian festival will be a programme of Baltic music: the Latvian composers Pēteris Vasks and Arturs Maskats will rub shoulders with the Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür. We will hear Vasks’ Lonely Angel, Maskats’ Concerto Grosso Nr 1, but the highlight of the festival will be the Latvian premiere of Erkki-Sven Tüür’s Angel’s Share for violin and orchestra, a dedication to the violinist Hugo Ticciati.

The O’Modernt chamber orchestra has brought together leading young musicians from all over Europe. Although founded just a couple of years ago, the orchestra has already won wide international acclaim and performed at prestigious venues like London’s Wigmore Hall, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Musikverein in Vienna and the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw. O’Modernt works with world-famous solo musicians like Evelyn Glennie, Steven Isserlis, Anne Sofie von Otter and Nils Landgren, as well as with rappers, choreographers and rock musicians.

The founder of O’Modernt Hugo Ticciati, also the soloist at the concert, is a passionate interpreter of contemporary music. He collaborates with Sven-David Sandström, Albert Schnelzer, Anders Hillborg, Thomas Jennefelt, Sergey Yevtushenko and many other composers. Ticciati has performed the violin concertos written for him on almost every continent of the world. He loves combining music with dance and literature – also with more marginal activities like kinetic painting or stone balancing. We were able to enjoy Ticciati’s virtuoso violin playing at the first Pēteris Vasks Festival last year, at the festival’s end concert “Distant Light”.

The second festival dedicated to the music of Pēteris Vasks will conclude on 20 April with a return performance of the 2016 concert of piano music “Vasks. Šimkus. Purvītis”, a multimedia production by Cēsis Concert Hall. The programme features an interpretation of Pēteris Vasks Seasons cycle by the brilliant pianist Vestards Šimkus, complemented by projections by Roberts Rubīns of some of the most beautiful landscapes by the classical Latvian painter Vilhelms Purvītis.

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.