“Dzīves iespējas.” Contemporary chamber music concert.

In Latvia’s concert scene, vocal chamber music is heard relatively rarely, and examples of contemporary vocal chamber music are even rarer. Therefore, every new work and new program in this genre is an event worthy of celebration. Sansusī will offer a new contemporary music program created by composer Platons Buravickis, opera soloist Armands Siliņš, and pianist Ēvalds Lazarevičs, who works in contemporary music and performance art. The concert’s conceptual visual design will be created by audiovisual and digital media artist Jurģis Peters and lighting artist Niks Cipruss.

Concert programme:
P. Buravickis – vocal cycle “Life Possibilities” (“Dzīves iespējas”)
R. Beaudoin – three parts from “Étude d’un prélude”
R. Beaudoin – “Wehmut”
G. Šmite – “Three Songs by William Shakespeare”

The concert focuses on new vocal cycles by Platons Buravickis and Gundega Šmite, complemented by chamber music from the American conceptualist Richard Beaudoin. Both vocal cycles were written specifically for these performers. Before the concert, musicologist Dāvis Eņģelis will give an introduction to the program.

P. Buravickis on his cycle: “I set out to write a three-song cycle titled ‘Life Possibilities,’ in which I wanted to address the issue of how different people live on Earth, what opportunities they have, and their interaction with nature. I used texts by the following authors: the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, the contemporary Irish poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Muldoon, and the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky.”

Gundega Šmite’s cycle “Three Songs by William Shakespeare” is a specially arranged version for baritone and piano of her earlier cycle “The Dreams of Summer’s Midnight by William Shakespeare,” originally written for ten musicians. In the Contemporary Chamber Music concert, it was premiered in this new version. Gundega says about her music: “A sultry hour in the very middle of a summer’s midnight brings together the most diverse characters from the great master of poetry’s plays. Seemingly contradictory figures step out of ancient manuscripts, meeting in a vast, carnivalesque swirl, from which only a few—accompanied by the magician Prospero—reach us: the king Claudius and the duke Orsino. And who can say for sure that it is only a fleeting, shimmering dream…?”