Plakidis’s “Looking Back” (1991) is a milestone in the work of our distinguished master – a simple, dignified, manfully restrained and deeply felt look at his own achievement. A fine continuation of the programme is Taneyev’s “John of Damascus” – an icon suffused with sacred experience and human feeling, whose mood is well captured by a line from the text used: “Though I have departed into eternal peace, my love remains.” Cast in a wholly different manner is Strauss’s expansive and vividly pictorial opus about the legendary hero of La Mancha – it can be listened to like a symphonic animated film.
At 6.18 pm in the “Pre-concert Talks” Orests Silabriedis’s guest will be musicologist Ināra Jakubone. There will be a discussion of Pēteris Plakidis’s body of work as a whole and his symphonic piece “Looking Back” as a milestone, as well as a few words about the little-known Taneyev and the famous sorrowful knight.
THE CONCERT PROGRAMME IS AVAILABLE HERE
THE CONCERT RECORDING ON LATVIAN RADIO 3 KLASIKA HERE
Arigo Štrāls – viola
Diana Ozoliņa – Principal
The State Choir “Latvija” – Choir
Vassily Sinaisky