Landscape with Birds
is recorded with enthusiastic warmth
and immediacy. Dita Krenberga plays
with fine imaginative sensitivity although
there is too much mechanical noise from
the keys. It is a long piece for solo
flute but such is the variety and virtuosity
of technique and poetic expression that
Vasks holds and grips the attention.
It is a work of considerable concentration.
The 1992 Fantasia
- Landscapes of a burnt-out earth is
for solo piano. It plays for about seventeen
minutes across three movements. It is
shot through with something close to
disillusion; perhaps reflective of the
hopes kindled by freedom from the Soviets
but the frustrations of a new regime
still falling short of national ideals.
The music is characterised by angry
impacts and an introspective reflection
that does not impart comfort.
The eight movements
of the Episodi e canto perpetuo
piano trio are chilly and far from consolatory,
The work was written in homage to Messiaen
but the aggressive music is closer to
late Shostakovich than to the French
composer. This is music of serious,
not to say tragic, inclination and gall.
It meets relief and poetry in the violent
bells and joyful song of the finale.
Music For A Deceased
Friend was written in memory of
the bassoonist Jana Barinska who died
tragically. It is tentative and exploratory
with more roles for birdsong who provide
a confidence which soon leaches away.
The instrumentation is for wind quintet.
The laconically titled
Book is from 1978. It is a full-on
rhapsodic ballad in two movements. The
first is a coarse and violent fortissimo.
The following pianissimo has the instrument
high in its register seeming to disappear
into stratospheric realms, stuttering
yet smooth. Once again Vasks' spirituality
emerges in the ‘still small voice’.
There is a composer-specified vocalise
from the cellist at 6.40.
Rob Barnett
Dita Krenberga (flute) Landscape