Press information, 4 June 2025, Riga. Very soon – on 13 June at 19:00 at Dzintari Concert Hall – the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO), together with artist-in-residence, violinist Vineta Sareika, will give its 99th season closing concert, with the orchestra’s artistic director and chief conductor Tarmo Peltokoski on the podium. The programme features music by Peteris Vasks and Gustav Mahler. The soloist in the performance of Peteris Vasks’ work Vox amoris (“The Voice of Love”) will be LNSO’s artist-in-residence for the season, Vineta Sareika. She is first violin of the prestigious Artemis Quartet, and only this year concluded her tenure as first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 2009 she became winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition, and is a multiple ECHO Klassik award winner. In addition to her concert career, Vineta Sareika is also a professor of chamber music at the Berlin University of the Arts, and serves as a jury member at the world’s most prestigious violin and chamber music competitions.
On the podium at the concert will be the orchestra’s artistic director and chief conductor Tarmo Peltokoski, with whom the LNSO has already spent three fulfilling seasons. With his charisma and creative energy, the Finnish conductor has won the hearts of audiences both in Latvia and around the world, and already in the 2026/2027 season Tarmo Peltokoski will become artistic director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, after serving in that capacity during the 2025/2026 season. In January 2022 he was appointed principal guest conductor of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, becoming the first holder of that title in the orchestra’s 42-year history. In May of that same year, Tarmo Peltokoski became LNSO’s artistic director and chief conductor, beginning his work with the 2022/2023 concert season. Soon after, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra also named him the orchestra’s principal guest conductor.
“As we close LNSO’s 99th season, we are happy and satisfied, because we have managed to more than achieve our set goals. A year ago, as we left the Great Guild for the duration of the renovation works, there was much uncertainty about how the season would unfold, where the concerts would take place, and other circumstances. The support of the Ministry of Culture has been very important during this difficult period. Together with our artistic leader Tarmo Peltokoski, we fearlessly set out on this new adventure, opening the season with concerts in Vilnius and at Rezekne’s GORS. Over the course of the season we have given concerts in 13 different halls, and they have consistently been very well attended. For this reason I want to thank the LNSO’s musicians, conductors, management, and also our loyal audiences for the strong musical season we have shared together,” says LNSO director Indra Lukina.
LNSO’s 99th season closing concert will feature Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ work “Vox amoris” (“The Voice of Love”), in which, through solo violin and string orchestra, the composer reveals the most fragile and beautiful of feelings. Peteris Vasks will be LNSO’s composer-in-residence for the 100th season, and this concert symbolically opens the composer’s residency with the LNSO. Alongside Vasks’ music, the programme also includes the outstanding Austrian symphonist Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, which captivates audiences with Mahler’s characteristically rich symphonic musical language, and its ever-deep and expansive content. The Sixth Symphony, also known as the “Tragic” (though the origin of this title remains a mystery), is a work full of contrasts, often surprising listeners of the symphony. It was written during the composer’s period of artistic maturity, when Mahler had become chief conductor of the Vienna Opera. This period is also marked as one of the brightest in Mahler’s family life. And yet it was precisely during this time that one of his darkest and most philosophical works was created – the Sixth – and this puzzle remains unsolved to this day.