Pēteris Vasks: Distant Light, Piano Quartet & Summer Dances The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra & Hannu Lintu

• Pēteris Vasks (b. 1946): Violin Concerto "Distant Light":
• 1 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Andante I 06:45
• 2 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Cadenza I 01:49
• 3 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Cantabile I 03:57
• 4 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Mosso 01:42
• 5 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Cadenza II 02:24
• 6 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Cantabile II 04:26
• 7 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Cadenza III 04:01
• 8 Violin Concerto "Distant Light": Andante II 08:04
• Summer Dances:
• 9 Summer Dances: I. Broadly, Sonorously 01:38
• 10 Summer Dances: II. Underscoring the Character 01:21
• 11 Summer Dances: III. Unhurriedly 01:29
• 12 Summer Dances: IV. Energetically 01:08
• 13 Summer Dances: V. Sadly 02:12
• 14 Summer Dances: VI. Joyfully 02:07
• 15 Summer Dances: VII. Broadly, Sonorously 01:52
• Quartet for Strings & Piano:
• 16 Quartet for Strings & Piano: I. Preludio 03:19
• 17 Quartet for Strings & Piano: II. Danze 05:41
• 18 Quartet for Strings & Piano: III. Canti drammatici 07:27
• 19 Quartet for Strings & Piano: IV. Quasi una passacaglia 07:39
• 20 Quartet for Strings & Piano: V. Canto principale 10:32
• 21 Quartet for Strings & Piano: VI. Postludio 03:35
• Total Runtime 01:23:08

Info for Pēteris Vasks: Distant Light, Piano Quartet & Summer Dances

Having spent much of his childhood in Latvia, where he also began his violin studies, Vadim Gluzman makes a return to his roots with this disc of music by Peteris Vasks. The ample programme (+ 84 minutes!) opens with the violin concerto ‘Distant Light’, which in the two decades since it was composed has become a modern classic. The composer has described it as ‘a song, coming from silence and floating away into silence, full of idealism and love, at times melancholy, at times dramatic.’ For the concerto, Gluzman found support from the strings of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu, just across the Baltic See from Latvia. For the other works on the disc he is however joined by Latvian colleagues and friends. These include the violinist Sandis Šteinbergs who appears in the duo Summer Dances, one of Vasks’ more carefree and buoyant pieces. This recent work in seven brief movements is, in the composer’s own words, the musical equivalent of a naïvist painting. In comparison, the Piano Quartet from 2001 is one of his longest and most imposing chamber works. Beginning with a perfect fifth in the piano, it takes the listener on an emotional roller-coaster, through hectic dances and dramatic songs to a typical ‘Vasks ending’ with a distant light offering a tempered hope. In the quartet, Vadim Gluzman leads an ensemble consisting of Ilze Klava, Reinis Birznieks, and Angela Yoffe.

Vadim Gluzman, violin
The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Hannu Lintu, conductor

Hannu Lintu
ist seit dem Jahr 2013 Chefdirigent des Finnischen Radio-Sinfonieorchesters. Er studierte Violoncello und Klavier an der Sibelius-Akademie in Helsinki sowie Dirigieren bei Jorma Panula. Er besuchte Meisterkurse bei Myung-Whun Chung und gewann 1994 den ersten Preis beim Nordic Conducting Competition in Bergen. In dieser Spielzeit gastiert Hannu Lintu u. a. beim Deutschen Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, beim Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien sowie bei den Symphonieorchestern von Toronto, Baltimore und Detroit. Zuletzt dirigierte er u. a. The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, das Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne sowie das Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. Er tritt immer wieder auch als Operndirigent hervor, so u. a. an der Estonian National Opera, der Tampere Opera und der Finnish National Opera, wo er zuletzt Produktionen von Carmen, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal und Aulis Sallinens King Lear betreute. Seine CD-Einspielungen mit dem Finnischen Radio-Sinfonieorchester u. a. mit Werken von Gustav Mahler (Sinfonie Nr. 1), Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen und Luciano Berio wurden vielfach ausgezeichnet.

Booklet for Pēteris Vasks: Distant Light, Piano Quartet & Summer Dances