Vasks - Distant Light, Piano Quartet, Summer Dances | BIS BIS2352

Vasks - Distant Light, Piano Quartet, Summer Dances

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Label: BIS

Cat No: BIS2352

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 29th May 2020

Contents

Artists

Vadim Gluzman (violin)
Sandis Steinbergs (violin)
Ilze Klava (viola)
Reinis Birznieks (cello)
Angela Yoffe (piano)
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Hannu Lintu

Works

Vasks, Peteris

Piano Quartet
Summer Dances for 2 violins
Violin Concerto 'Distant Light'

Artists

Vadim Gluzman (violin)
Sandis Steinbergs (violin)
Ilze Klava (viola)
Reinis Birznieks (cello)
Angela Yoffe (piano)
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Conductor

Hannu Lintu

About

Having spent much of his childhood in Latvia, where he also began his violin studies, Vadim Gluzman makes a return to his roots with this disc of music by Pēteris Vasks. The ample programme (over 84 minutes!) opens with the Violin Concerto ‘Distant Light’, which in the two decades since it was composed has become a modern classic. The composer has described it as ‘a song, coming from silence and floating away into silence, full of idealism and love, at times melancholy, at times dramatic.’

For the concerto, Gluzman found support from the strings of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu, just across the Baltic See from Latvia. For the other works on the disc he is however joined by Latvian colleagues and friends. These include the violinist Sandis Šteinbergs who appears in the duo Summer Dances, one of Vasks’ more carefree and buoyant pieces. This recent work in seven brief movements is, in the composer’s own words, the musical equivalent of a naïvist painting. In comparison, the Piano Quartet from 2001 is one of his longest and most imposing chamber works. Beginning with a perfect fifth in the piano, it takes the listener on an emotional roller-coaster, through hectic dances and dramatic songs to a typical ‘Vasks ending’ with a distant light offering a tempered hope. In the quartet, Vadim Gluzman leads an ensemble consisting of Ilze Klava, Reinis Birznieks, and Angela Yoffe.

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