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POSTCARDS FROM KURZEME

The lead viola of the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Santa Vižine, a double-bass player of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra Matīss Eisaks, and a laureate of the Latvian Grand Music Award, the dynamic pianist Agnese Egliņa - these outstanding musicians will meet in Riga to join forces on a chamber music programme with a unifying theme of Kurzeme. In the Aizpute-born Pēteris Vasks’ Sonata for Solo Double Bass quiet monologues are juxtaposed with expressive dialogues with the listener. There are similar contrasts in the Partita for viola and piano by Tālivaldis Ķeniņš whose life started in Liepāja. Gundaris Pone who would have celebrated his 90th birthday this year spent his childhood in Saldus and wrote seven piano postcards from Kurzeme in behalf of seven musical giants of the history; in the viola, however, he sought the voice of the Latvian mentality, contemplating the view of mourning and death in different places around the world. Kristaps Pētersons has written a completely new piece specifically for this concert, based on the notes from Kurzeme of Emilis Melngailis, a composer that is Pēterson’s senior by around 1.5 centuries.