Early music festival. Still with discoveries

Photo: Didzis Grodzs

Armands Znotiņš, “Latvijas Avīze”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”

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At the beginning of the evening of July 6, 2022 in the Great Guild, it seemed that the concert of the “O / Modernt Soloists” ensemble would not have the desired number of people.

However, as it usually happens, a couple of minutes before the musicians came on stage, everything fell into place, and the audience in the Great Guild hall and balcony duly appreciated the performance of the guest artists. On July 7, the Little Guild, filled with audiences, also hosted countertenor Marnix de Kat and the ensemble “Hathor Consort”; the same on July 8 in St. John’s Church with the Latvian Radio Choir and organist Freddy Eichelberger; finally, a few hours later, many of the visitors of this concert were also seen in Riga Cathedral, listening to the program sung and played by “Schola Cantorum Riga” and Ieva Nīmanes. It must be concluded that at a time when the folklore festival “Baltica”, the jazz-related “Rīgas ritmi”, the Riga Opera Festival, the US Latvian Song Festival in Minneapolis and more, and more, the International Early Music Festival has also maintained its usual public interest. And deservedly so, because four programs in Riga were completely enough to make sure of the high level of the festival’s concerts. This year’s ending also in Rundal, which had to be wished for others, because on July 9, there was also a performance of Richard Wagner’s opera “Tristan und Isolde” as part of the Cēsis Art Festival, and a strange parallel – those who don’t like romanticism could go to Stefano Landi’s opera on the same evening. Death of Orpheus” performance in Bauska. And vice versa – those who are less interested in baroque with the second ancient music festival “Vivat Curlandia!”, were kindly invited to Cēsis. Everything as in a civilized country.

Musical styles and eras also overlapped on July 6 at the Great Guild. The leader of “O/Modernt Soloists” Hugo Tičati is also known as an interpreter of the opuses of Artur Maskats and Pēters Vaskas, vocalist Lusiana Mančini is just as interested in Latvian music, and thus, together with cellist Julian Arpa and seven others, they expressed the previously expected quality of performance in baroque sound art this time – Hugo Ticati’s clean and precise timbre of the violin was perfectly suited to it, while the soloist’s singing of arias from Antonio Vivaldi’s operas “Orlando, the False Madman”, “Farnace” and “Griselda” became moments of triumph. The second observation – every year it seems that everything is already known in the music of the Baroque, Renaissance, and Middle Ages, and every year the Ancient Music Festival still brings new discoveries. So this year, next to the pages of works by the well-known geniuses Bach, Vivaldi, and Purcell, next to the scores of Juan Aranjes and Henri de Bailly, who were already familiar, the players brought Domenico Pellegrini and Joseph Abaco out of oblivion. Of course, not all of it corresponds to the advertising title “The Peaks of Italian, English and Spanish Baroque” – the almost constant ostinato variations on the themes of chacones sometimes suggested that their authors intended not immortal masterpieces, but typical applied music that the 21st century it is quite basic for players to play. However, the second weight was the charisma of all the concert participants, the continuous flow of their consciously created conceptual program (hence the overdubbing of Kurt Cobain’s song with the melancholy of Henry Purcell’s fantasy).

It was similar with the July 7 program “Masterpieces of the Italian Baroque”. The opus of Benedetto Ferrari, Isabella Leonarda, Claudia Sesa, Francesca Caccini, Antonio Caldara would still be refrained from being called masterpieces, whereas Bartolomeo de Selma i Salaverde and Diego Ortiz are Spanish authors, and the Englishman Henry Lowes is a continuation of the traditions of John Dowland. Secondly, such talented musicians as violinist Agnes Kanniņa, harpsichordist Ieva Saliete and gambist Romina Liška had no problem playing the scores included in the program – their level of virtuosity increased towards the end of the concert. Marnix de Kat’s singing left a completely professional impression, and here too one could come across a conceptually constructed program that reminded of the contribution of female composers already in the Baroque period, and where the instrumental angles of the performance – from the involvement of organ positives to the lights of string instruments – showed the polishing of interpretations.

From secular music to a sacred message – that was the direction of the programs of this year’s Ancient Music Festival. Here as a new discovery – the master of the North German organ school, Francis Tunders, mainly with the extended chorale fantasy “Christ lay in the grips of death”, where the guest artist Freddy Eichelberger played music according to his international reputation at the organ of St. John’s Church. As you know, this is also the case with the Latvian Radio choir and conductor Kaspars Putniņš, and the vocal interpretations here gave a lot of satisfaction – the central contrast was the juxtaposition of the highly dramatic reading of Bach’s motet “Jēzus, mans prieks” with the elucidated images of Dietrich Bukstehude’s “Missa alla brevis”, but there was no shortage also other nuances. Finally, the program of the “Schola Cantorum Riga” ensemble, supervised by Guntars Prānis, in the Doma church lit up in colorful colors – and not only because in the score “Unicornis captivatur” the text alone draws attention with the extraordinary fantasy of the 14th century author. Here, the monody of Gregorian chants alternated with examples of early polyphony, the participation of Ieva Niemanes and the presence of instruments in general (bagpipes, recorders, ratalira) accentuated the connection with folklore, while the emotional range revealed the feelings, thinking, world perception of the creators of this music and their contemporaries in all their richness.

In summary – from the above-mentioned point of view, it would be good to get to know the other side of medieval music with the works of Walter von der Fogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Adan de la Hal. And there are already other minnesengers, troubadours, trouvers, who show that we still haven’t gotten far from the reality of the Middle Ages. There are still monkeys with grenades in the political arena, but in personal life, ideals do not go hand in hand with reality. The old music sounds quite relevant even now.

Themes

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