Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946)
Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy (2021)
Cycle (1976)
The Seasons (1980, 1995, 2008, 1981)
Reinis Zariņš (piano)
rec. 2021, GORS, The Embassy of Latgale, Rēzekne, Latvia
ONDINE ODE1361-2 [80]
The Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks is best-known for a series of orchestral works which generally have a gentle, lyrical nature. He has clearly learned from the twentieth-century masters, but does not tend to be particularly loud or dissonant and has more in common with the minimalists such as the Estonian Arvo Pärt or the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov. He has not written a great deal for piano, but there are two major works, both included here, as well some shorter pieces, one of which was written for Reinis Zariņš, the pianist here, and is included in this programme.
Vasks’ piano writing is rather different from his orchestral writing, as reflects the different character of the piano as an instrument from that of the strings which he often favours orchestrally. He has clearly taken something from the flamboyant style of Liszt, and of more recent piano composers I can hear occasional influences from Debussy, Ravel and Messiaen. I do not mean that his music is derivative: I am just trying to orientate the listener to the kind of writing to expect.
We begin not with the earliest but with Vasks’ most recent piano work, Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy, which was written in 2021 and which here receives its first recording. We learn from the helpful sleevenote that in Latvian folklore the cuckoo was thought to foretell destinies. The number of calls you heard would be the number of years you had left to live, and there were other similar traditional beliefs. Vasks’ cuckoo sings in a falling third, which give way to a chorale-like theme which is elaborated in the kind of way Liszt uses in his Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses. We gradually become aware of an upward movement and there is a big climax, after which there is a moment of anguish and then we end with the solitary cuckoo.
Cycle is a comparatively early work, but this is also its first recording. It dates from 1976, when Vasks was thirty, and was written for his contemporary and childhood friend Tālivaldis Deknis, who gave this and other early Vasks works their premieres. It is in four movements and the whole work lasts for just under sixteen minutes. The opening Prologue begins with a call to attention followed by silence, which are both repeated several times. We then hear the deep rumble of strings being plucked inside the piano, then a jangle high in the treble. There is then a loose repetition of these motifs. The Nocturne second movement features a long wandering line, more typical of Vasks’ later works. The third movement is titled Drama and is a toccata, mainly in the bass but with interjections in the treble. The final Epilogue is quiet and exploratory, ascending slowly into the heavens, followed by a thunderous pounding in the bass and an abrupt ending. It is a more obviously modernist work than Vasks was to write later but is entirely convincing and coherent in its own terms.
Vasks’ major work for piano is The Seasons. This took a long time to complete. White Scenery, which represents winter, was written in 1980 and Autumn Music in 1981. However, Spring Music did not follow until 1995 and Green Scenery, representing summer, until 2008. The individual movements may be played separately, but when the complete cycle is performed, it must begin with White Scenery with the other movements following in their seasonal, not their compositional order. The movements also differ in length, with Spring Music being much the longest. Despite the long period of its composition the work is consistent in its idiom, and, indeed, I can imagine a listener considering that the structure of the individual pieces is rather too similar, as each builds to a climax about two thirds of the way through. However, each taken on its own is a characterful and rewarding work. The pieces are also quite programmatic, as explained in the sleevenote, from which I borrow a few phrases. White Scenery evokes the snow of a Latvian winter with slow, gentle, rather Debussyian phrases (think of Des pas sur la neige). In Spring Music Vasks says he ‘endeavoured to capture the miracle of spring’s return.’ He also wove birdsong into the piece; he must have been aware of Messiaen’s work of this kind but stylizes his birdsong quite differently. There are many changes of mood – in fact this piece can be seen as a one-movement sonata – and then a fierce ending. Green scenery celebrates the ‘spontaneous pagan joy’ of summer with a chordal main theme and a contrasting one featuring a rapid oscillation between two notes. At the climax there is sudden hush and a gentle theme appears, before there is a return to the festive mood.
Reinis Zariņš has established a career as a pianist with several recordings under his belt already, and it is interesting to note that he has Messiaen’s Vingt Regards in his repertoire, a work which has some affinities to these of Vasks. He is predictably well recorded by Ondine, and two of these works here are first recordings. There is another recording of The Seasons which came out in 2010 and has been praised both by the composer and by MWI (review) but Vasks also approves of this version. Enthusiasts for Vasks and for recent piano music need not hesitate.
Stephen Barber
