In the “Klasika” studio we meet with pianist Vestards Šimks, who talks about his latest solo program, which will be performed at the end of the Riga festival on July 9 at the Culture Palace “Ziemeļblāzma” at 20.00.
The concert program will focus on preludes written in different times and styles – from the baroque majestic Bach to the jazzy Gershwin, from the romantic Chopin to Scriabin, who speaks in glorious harmonies, as well as the impressionistically picturesque Debussy, the expressive Winter and Shudakovich ” .
Inta Pīrāga: I assume that these weather conditions, when you can rarely find refreshment, may not be the most suitable and stimulating works, so I definitely wanted to ask first, have I managed to find one of the most effective ways to train for a concert and how?
Vestards Šimkus: I am always a good good old man – I am a real evening man, and I started exercising every day around six o’clock or after six in the evening, and then – as needed. Its coolness in the evening is a little higher than during the day. However, this time is also great in the sense that I can not only practice playing the piano, but also practice to get used to playing in the heat that usually prevails only on stage and in the light of stage lights …
Because listeners who have never played on stage themselves, they can’t even imagine the heat that usually prevails on stage, especially if the pianist plays energetically and with all his might.
So that this kind of heat makes me get used to and prepare for the hot concert conditions in time.
Our conversation today at “Klasika” is about your new solo program, with which you had to open the Riga festival online about a month ago, but which, as COVID restrictions eased, gave the green light to the audience, which is why “Latvian Concerts” chose to postpone it to opportunity to play for real listeners. And now such a moment has come – on the evening of July 9 at 8 o’clock in the “Northern Lights” cultural palace, and probably this is the time when they are only happy about this change, that the concert was postponed, and I have such doubts whether this however, will not be the first time in a long time with the audience?
Yes, indeed, I have not played in front of the audience since the beginning of November last year, when my last public concert took place in Vilnius with the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra. It has been several months during which I have longed for listeners. And I understand that maybe not all listeners will be able to be present at this concert, but I am glad that the few who will be at the concert will be able to finally tell them about music and play. Of course, I am waiting for the times when the listeners will no longer be sorted by any parameters and everyone who wants to attend the concerts will be able to do it again.
This concert will also be recorded by Latvijas Radio, so that those listeners who will not have the opportunity to come in person will definitely be able to hear this in the recordings. You have already outlined the purpose of the program in a concise way. That this time you had a desire to focus not on one particular composer or a specific era, but on the basis of one genre, which can be found in the works of very different authors. The key word is a prelude with and without fugues. It already seems to me that it cannot be the case that this idea just flew in the air – there was probably a grain from which it all developed.
The idea evolved from similar ideas in recent years, which I have repeatedly realized in the form of concerts, namely, these are concert programs, which I call conceptual concert programs, which include music composed by different composers in the same genres. Or in similar genres, or in some way in a type of composition that echoes each other with something special. (..) This is in a sense a similar concert program with preludes by many different composers, some of whom also have fugues. The idea of how composers of different eras understand and resonate with each other, and what unites music from different eras through the same genres, is what really interests me. As I have already said in the concert application, many musicians are in vogue today to specialize in playing music of an ever narrower and narrower era. On the contrary, there is a desire to look for bridges and connections between different eras, different composers, and this can most clearly be done by creating programs that play the same or very similar genre compositions.
More and more – in the record!
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