The love for the Latvian landscape is audible in the piano works of Latvia’s greatest living composer, Peteris Vasks (b. 1946), especially in his Seasons, the composer’s most frequently performed piano work. For this album pianist Reinis Zarinš has brought two other piano works alongside The Seasons as first recordings: Vasks’ early piano work Cycle (Zyklus) from the 1970s, and a new piano work, Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy (2021), written by the composer for Reinis Zarinš during the pandemic.

Ever since his concerto debut at the age of ten, Reinis Zariņš has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician throughout Europe and North America. He has participated in prestigious music festivals including the Lucerne Festival, the Bath International Music Festival, and the Scotia Festival of Music. His thoughtful virtuosity has delighted audiences at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow. Reinis has collaborated with leading orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, and the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra, and with conductors Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvös, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Andris Poga, among others.

REVIEWS:

Alongside the world premiere recording of Vasks’ first-ever piano piece Cycle (1976) and the epic, complete The Seasons — four freestanding works composed between 1980 and 2008 — Cuckoo’s Voice—Spring Elegy (2021) serves to reinforce a sense of the importance to Vasks of his ongoing calling ‘that he must, until his last breath, glorify God’s world and people and his fatherland’, as Zariņš puts it. Yet, while Cycle especially is a welcome reminder of Vasks’ more astringent youthful style, and his writing is never less than intensely felt, there’s little trace here of the outright anguish that has often characterized his better-known string pieces. It’s as if Vasks is writing from inside nature as opposed to merely observing it: there’s an overarching stillness and acceptance within the sometimes dramatic push-pull of growth and decay explored throughout—and the contrasting moods he traverses ultimately nestle within that bigger process, albeit to varying degrees of comfort.

Zariņš’s impeccable pianism is hugely to thank for this, and his capacity to trace cohesive narratives through often lengthy, apparently free-wheeling but rigorously composed, works. Most satisfying is ‘Autumn Music’ (1981) which looks stylistically backwards and forwards even as it rounds The Seasons and the album itself.

-- BBC Music Magazine

This has the premiere recordings of Zyklus (Cycle) from 1976 and Cuckoo’s Voice. Spring Elegy from 2021. Cuckoo’s Voice is improvisatory and generally meditative, though it does have a few clamorous climaxes. Then Cycle bursts in with notes firing as if from a machine gun, taunting and acerbic. Its pauses are foreboding. Zarins brings out some impressive sounds from the insides of the piano: gradations of pizzicato and a pulsing, ringing “wub-wub-wub” from some low frequencies at the end of the ‘Prologue’. Most string-plucking from pianists sounds awkward, but Zarins gets loveliness out of it, even evoking a zither in the ‘Nocturne’. The repetitive rumblings and clattering chords of ‘Drama’ are too close to pompous avant-garde pounding for my taste, though I have to admit that Vasks manages to preserve his own Baltic voice through it all. The ‘Epilogue’ ties the preceding movements together and ends with what sounds like bricks dropping onto the strings.

The Seasons clocks in at 52 minutes. ‘White Scenery’ is a somewhat minimalist reverie, while ‘Spring Music’ goes for nearly 20 minutes, rippling and ringing and shaking the whole world by the collar with vernal urgency. This spring is the opposite of the English pastoral type and more like a tempered, transparent version of one of Messiaen’s bird-song pieces. The harmonies of ‘Green Scenery’ veer closer to England, but the repeated chords soon turn to tedium. Irritation turns to exasperation in ‘Autumn Music’ and its unending strings of repeated notes similar to tremolo on a guitar. It is more bearable when I concentrate on it (rather than, say, listening to it in the car), but rarely has a piece driven me up the wall so quickly.

Zarins’s playing is superb, and any Vasks fan will want this.

-- American Record Guide (Stephen Page)

Pianist Reinis Zarinš impresses with evocative music-making. In coaxing beautiful colors from the piano, he renders well the more subtle as well as the more immediate moods of the music.

-- Pizzicato

Latvian composer Peteris Vasks(b. 1946) has earned much international acclaim through his deeply spiritual works of choral music, symphonies and concertos. Vasks’ list of works also includes several pieces of chamber music. This album by Trio Palladio from Latvia includes Vasks’ works for the piano trio. Trio Palladio is a chamber music ensemble of three established Latvian soloists, avid chamber musicians and acclaimed recording artists Eva Bindere, Kristina Blaumane and Reinis Zarinš. Each of them is the laureate of the Grand Music Award of Latvia, and in 2019 they were nominated for this prestigious award as a trio. Recently the trio had its debut recital at the London Wigmore Hall and the trio’s interpretations have been broadcast live on the BBC Radio 3,as well as the Polish and Latvian radio. Trio Palladio creates conceptual programs with rich variety of classical, romantic and contemporary chamber music, with particular focus on works by Latvian and Baltic composers.

REVIEW:

What I admire most about Peteris Vasks is his deep spirituality. It permeates all of his music, even his early avant-garde compositions. This release features three of his works for piano trio. All three are quintessentially Vasks.

Three of Latvia’s best chamber musicians comprise the Trio Palladio. Their performances of their compatriot’s music plumb the depths of Vasks’ works. The trio plays not just beautifully, but lovingly. And that makes this an album I’ll revisit time and again.

– WTJU-FM (Charlottesville, VA) [Ralph Graves]

This exciting new release in the field of contemporary music includes three new concertos by Finnish composer Olli Virtaperko (b. 1973). The concertos are combining multiple styles from Baroque to prog jazz as well as different performance practices. Romer’s Gap is a concerto for electrically amplified cello featuring as soloist Perttu Kivilaakso, best known as lead cellist in the multi-million selling rock band Apocalyptica.

Ambrosian Delights is a concerto for the knifonium, a vacuum-tube-based analogue synthesiser created by Jonte Knif. Multikolor, written for Joonatan Rautiola, is a single-movement work for baritone sax and small chamber orchestra.

Composer Olli Virtaperko has enjoyed a multi-faceted career. He studied composition, the Baroque cello and early music performance practice at the University of Edinburgh and at the Sibelius Academy, and on the other hand he was also a vocalist in one of Finland’s most popular rock groups, Ultra Bra. Virtaperko’s musical background feeds directly into his work as a composer, which includes heavy-duty solo concertos and orchestral works but also a number of works for Baroque and Renaissance period instruments and for his own early music group, Ensemble Ambrosius.

With this new release the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir under Daniel Reuss pay tribute to Max Reger (1873-1916) and Rudolf Tobias (1873-1918), a composer of the classical-romantic tradition and associated with the beginning of professional composition in Estonia.

This set includes a Blu-ray audio CD playable on Blu-ray players only and a standard CD playable on all CD players.

This special CD Blu-Ray Audio Ondine release includes world première recordings of three orchestral works by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin (b. 1957), among the most exciting contemporary composer figures in Scandinavia, performed by the Bergen Symphony Orchestra and Finnish conductor John Storgårds. Fisher King, a concertante piece for Trumpet and Orchestra (2011) features one of today’s greatest trumpeters, Håkan Hardenberger. Composed more than thirty years ago, Id was Mr. Wallin’s first-ever orchestral work. Manyworlds is an extensive, half-hour’s long orchestra work, jointly commissioned by the Bergen, Helsinki and NDR, Hannover orchestras. The title of the work refers to the Many-world theory in quantum physics dealing with a very large, perhaps infinite number of parallel universes. The Blu-Ray Audio disc, an Ondine first, also includes a 2D & 3D Video by Boya Bøckman based on Manyworlds.

Finnish composer Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970) is one of Finland’s most distinguished composers of the last two decades. The most consistent feature in Wennäkoski’s music is its rich palette of tonal colour, not restricted to musical pitches but also incorporating noise as required. Her expression ranges from sensitive lyricism to forceful outbursts. Her output is wideranging, including orchestral music, vocal works, chamber music and solo pieces. This second album of her music on Ondine includes Wennäkoski’s international breakthrough work, Flounce (2017) from the BBC Last Night of the Proms performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new chief conductor Nicholas Collon. Premiered in 2022, Wennäkoski’s Harp Concerto Sigla was written for harpist Sivan Magen.

REVIEWS:

Lotta Wennäkoski (b. 1970) is one of Finland’s most distinguished composers of the last two decades. The most consistent feature in Wennäkoski’s music is its rich palette of tonal colour, not restricted to musical pitches but also incorporating noise as required. Her expression ranges from sensitive lyricism to forceful outbursts. Her output is wide-ranging, including orchestral music, vocal works, chamber music and solo pieces. This second album of her music on Ondine includes Wennäkoski’s international breakthrough work, Flounce (2017) from the BBC Last Night of the Proms performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its new chief conductor Nicholas Collon. Premiered in 2022, Wennäkoski’s Harp Concerto Sigla was written for harpist Sivan Magen.

-- Records International

This new release by the award-winning Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu is dedicated to the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970), a leading figure in the music of post-Second World War Germany. This album includes a rendering of the composer’s magnificent violin concerto featuring star violinist Leila Josefowicz, orchestral score Photoptosis, as well as the first album recording of Die Soldaten Vocal Symphony based on an opera that is widely considered as one of the greatest German operas of the 20th century. Zimmermann wrote his Die Soldaten opera, one of his keyworks, during the 1950s and 60s. The premiere of the opera was cancelled, and upon hearing the claim that the opera would be ‘impossible’ to perform, the composer adapted parts of the opera into a 40-minute vocal symphony suitable for concert performance. This work, filled with power and drama, is much more than a description of the apocalypse of modern war, and deserves its rightful place alongside the operas of Alban Berg. Zimmerman’s Violin Concerto is a relatively early work in the composer’s oeuvre. It was premiered in 1950 but has suffered much neglect. The influence of Schoenberg, Hindemith, Bartók, Stravinsky and Prokofiev are visible in this work which we might consider to manifest echoes of war. Photoptosis (1968), ‘Incidence of Light’, is among Zimmermann’s final orchestral pieces. Inspired by a painting created by Yves Klein for the Gelsenkirchen music theatre, this work includes quotations by Scriabin, Beethoven, Bach, and Wagner, among others. Yet, this “Prélude”, as described by the composer, is not a collage, but a study in orchestral sonority and light. Recordings by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu on Ondine have gathered excellent reviews in the international press. Two of their recordings were nominated for Gramophone Awards in 2018.

Pawel Łukaszewski (b. 1968) is possibly the most-performed contemporary composer from Poland. His spiritual choral works are performed by both professional and amateur choirs around the world. Łukaszewski’s output has a significant position in Great Britain where his works are performed and premiered by renowned London and Cambridge choral ensembles. This new album by the award-winning State Choir LATVIJA under Maris Sirmais includes several world première recordings from the Polish master.

REVIEW:

The performances presented here by the State Choir of Latvia under its conductor, Māris Sirmais, are simply outstanding. At what seems to be about 50 voices, the choir is larger than a chamber choir but smaller than a symphonic choir, and it manages to combine the virtues of both in this tremendously impressive recital. The choir has no faults to my ear. Intonation and ensemble are excellent, all parts exhibit outstanding internal blend with no individual voices sticking out, and excessive vibrato – the bane of choral excellence – is non-existent. The choir exhibits an extreme dynamic range, and yet at both ends of that spectrum its technical control never wavers, whether at fff – where it can produce an immense sound with no sign of hardness – or when reduced to more soloistic proportions. The recording is well up to the challenge that such an ensemble presents, and the sound is rich, deep, resonant, and detailed all at once.

-- Fanfare