Peteris Vasks: Songs of My Heart Latvian Radio Choir & Sigvards Klava

• Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946): Actus caritatis (2021):
• 1 Vasks: Actus caritatis (2021) 04:36
• The Fruit of Silence (2013):
• 2 Vasks: The Fruit of Silence (2013) 04:10
• Pater noster (1995):
• 3 Vasks: Pater noster (1995) 06:51
• Angele Dei (2021):
• 4 Vasks: Angele Dei (2021) 04:53
• Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013):
• 5 Vasks: Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013): I. Such lightness (Tāds gaišums) 03:22
• 6 Vasks: Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013): II. And suddenly such silence (Un pēkšņi tāds klusums) 02:48
• 7 Vasks: Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013): III. Where was I? (Kur biju?) 02:00
• 8 Vasks: Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013): IV. Then time stopped (Tad apstājas laiks) 03:17
• 9 Vasks: Love Songs (Mīlas dziesmas) (2013): V. Not a leaf is moving (Ne lapa nekustas) 02:17
• Prayer (Lūgšana) (1961):
• 10 Vasks: Prayer (Lūgšana) (1961) 03:49
• First Grass (Pirmā zāle) (2025):
• 11 Vasks: First Grass (Pirmā zāle) (2025) 04:05
• Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem):
• 12 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): I. 03:40
• 13 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): II. 03:48
• 14 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): III. 02:25
• 15 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): IV. 04:21
• 16 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): V. 03:33
• 17 Vasks: Six Songs (Šesas dziesmas ar Kn. Skujenieka vārdiem): VI. I Wish You (Novēlējums) 02:31
• Our Mountains (Mūsu kalni) (2017):
• 18 Vasks: Our Mountains (Mūsu kalni) (2017) 04:16
• Within My Nation (Savā tautā) (1990):
• 19 Vasks: Within My Nation (Savā tautā) (1990) 04:07
• Fatherland (Tēvu zeme) (2018):
• 20 Vasks: Fatherland (Tēvu zeme) (2018) 02:57
• Total Runtime 01:13:46

Info for Peteris Vasks: Songs of My Heart

Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946) is considered among the leading Baltic composers of today and is known for his profound musical language.

The award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava are dedicating their new album to Pēteris Vasks’ 80th birthday this year. The choir performs several world premiere recordings of Pēteris Vasks’ choral music, including newly written works for the choir, as well as Vasks’ earliest choral composition, dating from 1961. All of the composer’s favoured themes find fertile ground in these works: pantheistic faith, love, silence and homeland. Essentially tonal and diatonic, slow-moving, homophonic and syllabic, fluid and linear, they possess a discreet grace and a fragile luminosity.

Although Pēteris Vasks regards himself primarily as a composer of instrumental music, his choral works have enjoyed considerable success in his homeland. Sadly, until the collapse of the Soviet Union, sacred music was strictly forbidden, and any other form of vocal music was acceptable only after passing through the censors’ gauntlet. From the 1970s onwards, Vasks therefore wrote little vocal music, and virtually no sacred music, for more than two decades. Until the mid-1980s, no sacred music rooted in the Christian tradition was performed at concerts organised by the Latvian Composers’ Union. The Latvian Radio Choir was among the few ensembles willing to champion a composer considered persona non grata by the regime and undeterred by his innovative language. The programme for this recording, conceived as a tribute to Pēteris Vasks on his eightieth birthday, spans a period of more than half a century and focuses on his intimate a cappella choral works in which he employs a simple, languid and deliberately conventional musical language.

Latvian Radio Choir
Sigvards Klava, conductor

Sigvards Kļava
began working with the Latvian Radio Choir in 1987 and was appointed its Chief Conductor and Artistic Director in 1992. As one of Latvia's most prolific choral conductors, Sigvards Kļava has collaborated with every leading choir and orchestra in the country, performing the great works of the standard repertoire in addition to conducting most premieres of new choral works by Latvian composers. He has recorded over 20 CDs with the Latvian Radio Choir. Sigvards Kļava has also been Chief Conductor at a number of Latvian and Nordic song festivals. He is a co-founder of the Latvian New Music Festival ARENA and serves as a member of its artistic board. He teaches young conductors at the Choral Department of the Latvian Academy of Music and the Choral College of the Riga Lutheran Cathedral. Sigvards Kļava appears as a guest conductor with leading European choirs. He has received the Latvian Great Music Award and the Latvian Cabinet of Ministers Award.

Einojuhani Rautavaara
(born 9 October 1928) is internationally one of the best known and most frequently performed Finnish composers. He is by nature a romantic, even a mystic, as is often apparent from the titles of his works: for example Angels and Visitations for orchestra or his double-bass concerto Angel of Dusk. Despite Rautavaara's label of "mysticism" he is a complex and contradictory figure whose works cannot be categorized in stylistic terms.

At the age of seventeen Rautavaara began studying the piano and later went on to study musicology at Helsinki University and composition at the Sibelius Academy. From 1951-53 he was a pupil of Aarre Merikanto receiving his diploma in composition in 1957. In 1955 the Koussewitzky Foundation awarded Jean Sibelius a scholarship in honour of his 90th birthday to enable a young Finnish composer of his choice to study in the United States. Sibelius selected Rautavaara who spent two years studying with Vincent Persichetti at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and also took part in the summer courses at Tanglewood given by Roger Sessions and Aaron Copland. In 1957 Rautavaara continued his studies with Wladimir Vogel in Ascona, Switzerland and a year later with Rudolf Petzold in Cologne. Rautavaara has taught and lectured at the Sibelius Academy as the professor of composition. Since 1988 he has made his living as a composer in Helsinki.

Rautavaara's earliest works revealed close ties to tradition but also his desire to renew it. They were followed by an extreme constructivist and avant-garde phase (as in the serially organized fourth symphony "Arabescata", 1962) after which Rautavaara turned to hyper-romanticism and finally mysticism. Since the early 1980s, Rautavaara has adopted a sort of post-modern musical language in which modern and traditional elements of varying degrees of constructivism or freedom are combined with one another.

Rautavaara has composed eight symphonies, the most frequently performed of them being the Angel of Light, his seventh symphony. Symphony No. 8, The Journey was premiered in April 2000 by The Philadelphia Orchestra under Wolfgang Sawallisch. Other important groups of works include concertos for different solo instruments, among them the three piano concertos, the popular Violin Concerto (1977), the Harp Concerto (2000) and the Clarinet Concerto (2001-02). Rautavaara has also written a large body of chamber music as well as choral and vocal works including All-Night Vigil for a cappella chorus. One of Rautavaara's most popular works is Cantus arcticus, concerto for birds and orchestra, in which the straightforward orchestral part is juxtaposed with the sounds of birds recorded by the composer himself. Rautavaara's latest orchestral works, published by Boosey & Hawkes, include and Manhattan Trilogy (2004), Book of Visions (2005), Before the Icons (2005) and A Tapestry of Life (2007).

Apart form his symphonies (ODE 1145-2Q) and concertos (ODE 1156-2Q), the central pillars of Rautavaara's extensive oeuvre are his operas. With Vincent (1985-87) and The House of the Sun (1990) Rautavaara has scored a notable international success. Aleksis Kivi (1995-96) was premiered at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 1997 and it has been performed in Cosenza, Italy and Minneapolis, U.S.A since then. The latest stage work is Rasputin (2001-2003), an opera about the life of mystic and healer Grigory Rasputin.

Booklet for Peteris Vasks: Songs of My Heart