Discovering Polish Composer Milosz Magin: A Review of Kremerata Baltica and Sinfonietta Riga’s Performances at Riga Festival

I am skeptical about the daily announcement that “a brilliant and unrepeatable concert awaits”, but the opening concert of the Riga Festival, which was performed by the chamber orchestra at the Great Guild on May 26 Kremerata Baltica and the French pianist Likās Debargs really was. This was one of the high and inspiring musical peaks of this spring, alongside the closing concert of the season of the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tarmo Peltokoski and the orchestra’s last weekend Sinfonietta Riga For the closing concert of the 17th season, which continued the Riga Festival with a deeply moving reading of Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto, Uzbek pianist Behzoda Abduraimova, Sinfonietta Riga and performed by conductor Normund Schne at the Great Guild on June 3.

Magin’s magic

The concerts of both chamber orchestras took place at the Riga Festival, and both were united not only by true, deeply meaningful and emotionally filled interpretations, but also by the fact that these collectives systematically surprise us with valuable, but little known or even unheard music here. Persisting searches and surprising discoveries are the key words that have expressed the identity of these two artistic entities for years.

Kremerata Baltica The great discovery of the May 26 program was Polish composer Milosz Magin (1929–1999): his Stabat Mater and the Third Piano Concerto, which is extremely virtuosic, but also an infinitely beautiful and thrilling opus, in which the stormy parts of the cycle are opposed by a touchingly lyrical, fragile, melodic island – Adagio. It is clear that only an author who is a great pianist himself can create such a magnificent piano sound language, and Miloš Magin was such. Around the middle of the 20th century, he was successful in the Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, the Marguerite Long and Jacques Thibault Competition in Paris, and the Vianna da Mota Competition in Lisbon. In 1985, Miloš Magin himself founded an international pianist competition in Paris, which takes place once every two years.

Milos Magin was one of those rare pianists who also knew how to play stringed instruments, he has also composed concert genre pieces for them. The artist has also conducted and studied ballet at a serious level. The ambitious international career of a pianist started at a young age was unfortunately interrupted by a broken wrist in a car accident, but after partially recovering, Miloš Magin started recording all the piano works of Frédéric Chopin (1968, Decca), devoted himself to composing and played his own opus. By the way, YouTube you can listen to Miloš Magin’s Third Piano Concerto performed by the author with the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra (1974), he later recorded it together with the Lodz Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the composer’s music, we hear both the roots of Polish culture (Chopin’s influence), the sensitivity characteristic of French music, and the broad context of musical creativity of the first half of the 20th century. Living most of his life in Paris, Milos Magin absorbed the sophistication and plasticity characteristic of French music. On the other hand, the prayers composed for string orchestra and timpani included in the concert program (without text!) Stabat Mater (1973) in the diatonic simplicity and the feeling through the pain towards light, closeness to the spirituality of the sound art of Pēteras Vaskas.

Pianist Likās Debarga was introduced to the creations of the undeservedly underestimated Polish music master of the 20th century, Miloš Magin, by Debarga’s first piano teacher, a student of the composer, Kristīne Meignier, and the French pianist has become one of the most ardent popularizers of Polish compositions. The endless tsunamis of virtuosic passages of the third piano concerto are as if created for the passionate nature of Likas Debargs and do not cause difficulties for the pianist’s nimble fingers, while the lyricism enchants with a dreamy softness. Especially – in the lightly nostalgic miniature from Milos Magin’s six played in the encore Polish miniatures cycle.

The audience in Latvia knows and expects Likas Debarga. I will just remind you that immediately after participating in the XV International Peter Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (2015), he became a world sensation. The extraordinary musician, who surprised both with his musicality and his unique piano playing technique, was “rowed off” by the jury in fourth place, but life put everything in the right places. Debargs is currently in Lika Kremerata Baltica guest artist in residence, performs intensively worldwide and makes recordings that are released by the company Sony Classical. Among them is also together with Kremerata Baltica the recorded music album of Milos Magin Zal – The Music of Milosz Magin (2021), which also includes the Third Piano Concerto. This opus became a bright discovery for me only now, but Likā Debargs and Kremerata Baltica managed to play it on the very threshold of the covid pause in March 2020 in the Small Hall of the Dzintari Concert Hall and in the Ventspils Concert Hall Latvia.

A thrilling experience of the May 26 concert was also Cesar Frank’s romantically heightened, extremely contrasting and at the same time exquisitely nuanced Piano Quintet in faminor Andrej Pushkarev arranged for piano and chamber orchestra. Like Debarga and Kremerata Baltica in performance it sounded almost like another piano concerto, but without losing the nerve of chamber music.

Perfection and freedom

The State Chamber Orchestra also captivated with interesting musical rarities Sinfonietta Riga The final concert of the 17th season under the direction of conductor Normund Schne and with guest concertmaster Eva Binder: a creatively bright, exciting and aesthetically engaging fusion of baroque and repetitive minimalism was offered in the Double Double Concerto of our contemporary Russian composer Pavel Karmanov, as well as the complex polyrhythms of the 20th century American and Mexican avant-garde experimenter and self-playing, “program them” pianola fan Conlon Nankaroff Etude for mechanical piano no. 7, which this time was played perfectly by the orchestra (in an arrangement by the American pianist and composer Ivar Mihašoff). In the middle – a filigree, elegant, expressive and heartfelt reading of Joseph Haydn’s Lamajor or Symphony No. 87 with wonderful, playful woodwind solos in the slow movement and a characteristic oboe sound in the minuet (3rd movement).

The highlight of the program was the Uzbek pianist Behzoda Abduraimova and Sinfonietta Riga ecstatic interplay while performing the extremely dramatic and complex Second Piano Concerto of Sergei Prokofiev. This music contains everything that a young – 22-year-old – person felt, experiencing the death of a close friend (most likely – suicide). Depressing tragedy and verse-changing, dazed struggle, wall-crawling in despair. Dramatism. A devastating force. Explosive rant. The fact that ten years later Prokofiev had to restore the score that had perished in the revolution in Russia only made this music stronger, more appealing.

Behzod Abduraimov’s impressive pianistic technique and clarity of interpretation ideas combined with temperament, courage and endurance of a trained war horse allowed him to fully reveal the message of the piece. Also worthy of admiration was the mutual communication and sharp response of the pianist, orchestra and conductor, which ensured both perfect precision and freedom in the maddened, passionate gallop. A completely different feature was drawn into the pianist’s portrait by the only addition – Sergei Rachmaninoff alone from the preludes, which is like a nuanced, clear, elusively airy watercolor in sound.