With the coming of spring, Cēsis Concert Hall presents the annual April of Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival, this year running on 15 and 16 April 2023. As part of the programme, the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra will make its debut in Cēsis under the conductor Juha Kangas, performing Vasks’ Concerto for Viola with the Latvian viola player Ilze Kļava. We will also witness an act of synergy between chamber music and dance performed by Trio Vitruvi and solo dancers of the Royal Danish Ballet, as well as a conversation with Pēteris Vasks on censorship, organised by Support Fund for the Burning Conscience permanent exhibition.

The April of Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival opens on 15 April at 16:00 with ‘Healing the Rifts’, a discussion organised by Support Fund for the Burning Conscience permanent exhibition. Censorship is banned in Latvia by the Constitution of the country. Anyone is free to express themselves creatively in the genre, style or according to the aesthetic principles of their choice. But what were the conditions under which a young composer was forced to work in the Latvian SSR? How did the Soviet censorship work? What were the obstacles placed in the path of a young composer deemed by Soviet functionaries incongruous with the Communist ideology and thus a persona non grata? How did searching for ways to bypass the censorship and resisting the Soviet system transform into factors that are contributory to a successful international career?

In our search for answers to these and other questions, we will be joined by Pēteris Vasks. The conversation will be mediated by composer and censorship researcher Edgars Raginskis and, thanks to the support from the Ministry of Culture, admission to the event will be free of charge.

The April of Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival is invariably musically centred around the oeuvre of composers hailing from the Baltic and Nordic countries, performed by artists of the same region – which is why it will be a special pleasure for us to present the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, appearing for the first time at Cēsis Concert Hall, and welcome back the prominent Finnish composer Juha Kangas, already well known in Latvia, at an event continuing the opening night at 18:00. Kangas is a close musical kindred spirit of Pēteris Vasks, and we are proud of the fact that the ‘Distant Light’ concert, part of the inaugural Vasks Festival, conducted by him and featuring Sinfonietta Rīga Orchestra and the soloist Hugo Ticciati, was nominated for the 2018 Grand Music Award in the Best Concert category.

The core of the programme to be performed on 15 April is Pēteris Vasks’ Viola Concerto. It was written in 2016 for the fiery Grammy-nominated violist Maxim Rysanov and will be interpreted in Cēsis by Ilze Kļava.

“There is depth to Pēteris Vasks’ music – it is very special, characteristic only of him and nobody else. The piece is filled with the composer’s ideas and thoughts about the world, about man in the world. At the same time, there are also moments of light, even dance-like passages demanding incredible virtuosity from the viola,’ says Maxim Rysanov, speaking about Vasks’ Concerto for Viola and String Orchestra.

The programme also presents two opuses by Finnish composers: Symphony for Strings by Vasks’ contemporary Pehr Henrik Nordgren and Impromptu by the great Romantic Jean Sibelius. The romantic note in the programme will be further enhanced by a musical piece for strings by the great Latvian musical master Jēkabs Mediņš, ‘Legend’.

On Pēteris Vasks’ birthday, Sunday, 16 April at 18:00, a very special concert awaits music lovers in Cēsis, introducing Latvian listeners to one of the most brilliant new ensembles in Europe, the Danish Trio Vitruvi appearing in their unique dance project Kammerballetten.

The programme will see instrumental pieces interpreted by Trio Vitruvi alternate with dance performances by soloists of the Royal Danish Ballet, musically accompanied by the ensemble. We will hear music by Pēteris Vasks, Arvo Pärt, Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach, Pablo de Sarasate, Maurice Ravel and Valentyn Silvestrov.

Trio Vitruvi play together since summer 2013; their debut at the Junge Elite concert series of Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Germany attracted abundance of attention. A year later the trio won both First Prize and the Audience Prize at the Danish National Radio’s P2 Chamber Music Competition, but shortly after that another First Prize followed, this time in Latvia, at the Jūrmala International Music Competition. Trio Vitruvi have since performed at prestigious venues like Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Salle Cortot, Laeiszhalle, Schloss Grafenegg and elsewhere.

Speaking of the trio, the prestigious Gramophone magazine is laconic: ‘an ensemble to look out for’. In 2018 the musicians of Trio Vitruvi launched a project entitled Kammerballetten – an annual festival hosted by the Royal Danish Theatre and is based on a synergy of ballet and chamber music.

The programme of the April of Pēteris Vasks’ Music festival will mark the Latvian debut of this unique union of dance and music.