Organ music festival “ORGANISMS” with standing tattoos / Article / LSM.lv

On Saturday, October 24, the fifth international organ music festival “ORGANismi” was performed with a concert by organist Iveta Apkalns, composer and pianist Raimonds Pauls and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jānis Stafeckis.

The Fifth International Organ Music Festival “ORGANISMS” started on Thursday, October 22, when, continuing the tradition of the festival’s guest artists’ concert, the Austrian music duo organist and composer Valentim Fheodoroff and harpist Julia Christine Lukan Organ and Harp ”, in which the voices of the mighty organ intertwined with the fragile sounds of the harp in the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, Cesar Frank, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and other composers.

On the first day of the festival, in cooperation with Jānis Ivanovs Rēzekne Music High School, organist Iveta Apkalna’s master class for young musicians took place, where Apkalna told about her experience and path from the music school here in Rēzekne individually.

The central event of the festival can certainly be considered the concert program created especially for the festival by Iveta Apkalna, maestro Raimonds Pauls and the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, which took place on Saturday, October 24, and their listeners had the opportunity to enjoy both the rehearsal with the audience and the evening. music journalist Orests Silabriedis and director of Latvian Radio 3 Gunda Vaivode took on the role.

Before the evening’s concert, the audience had the opportunity to take part in pre-concert talks, in which Orest Silabriedis talked about the concert and especially cooperation with maestro Raimonds Pauls with Gundas Vaivods, conductor Jānis Stafeckis, actor Gundars Āboliņš and composer Juris Vaivodas.

In addition to the works of Gija Kančeli and Semjuel Bārber, Raimonds Pauls’ compositions in new arrangements and arrangements for organ, composed by the composer Anna Veismane, were premiered in the festival’s large concert program. The surprise prepared by Raimonds Pauls for Iveta Apkalna – the composition “Pie baznīcas” – also experienced its premiere.

A special moment in the concert was the change of Raimonds Pauls and Iveta Apkalna with instruments, singing the Latgalian folk song “Aiz azara high column”.

Both Apkalns at the piano and Pauls at the organ were a surprise to those present, although the musicians themselves are not unfamiliar with these instruments and their playing was mastered in the past.

The festival “ORGANISMS” sounded loud, inviting artists to return to the stage more than once.

The premiere of the concert performance “Cherry Tree” canceled at this year’s festival, in which Jānis Ivanovs Rezekne Music Secondary School Children’s Choir (conductors Anda Lipska and Jānis Veličko) was preparing to participate together with Iveta Apkalns and actor Gundars Āboliņš, is planned for 2021.

The festival “ORGANISMS” is supported by the State Cultural Capital Fund in the target program “Ensuring the availability of versatile professional art in development centers of national or regional significance in the regions of Latvia” and Rezekne City Council. The live broadcast of the concert could be listened to on Latvian Radio 3, but the TV recording performed by Latvijas Televīzija is scheduled for the beginning of 2021.

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