Pēteris Vasks - String Quartets Nos. 2 & 5 (Spīķeru String Quartet)

Information

Composer: Pēteris Vasks

1. String Quartet No. 5: I. Being Present
2. String Quartet No. 5: II. So Distant ... Yet Near
3. String Quartet No. 2 "Summer Tunes": I. Coming Into Bloom
4. String Quartet No. 2 "Summer Tunes": II. Birds
5. String Quartet No. 2 "Summer Tunes": III. Elegy

Spīķeru String Quartet
Marta Spārnina, violin
Antti Kortelainen, violin
Ineta Abakuka, viola
Eriks Kiršfelds, cello

Date: 2015
Label: Wergo

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Review

Wergo’s booklet-notes seem to hint at the prospect of a complete cycle of Vasks’s string quartets from this accomplished ensemble made up of first-desk players from Sinfonietta Riga and the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra. If so, then this pairing of the Second Quartet (Summer Tunes) from 1984 with No 5 (the Latvian’s last to date, written in 2003-04 for the Kronos Quartet) makes an auspicious start. Certainly the Spīķeru are intensely appreciative of the latter’s sinewy purpose, unrelenting concentration and songful, fine-spun serenity. Intriguingly, the first of its two movements shares the subtitle of ‘klātbūtne’ (meaning ‘being present’) with the Second Cello Concerto so eloquently championed by Sol Gabetta on a recent Sony anthology (2/16).

Though not described as such, this may well be the piece’s debut on disc, whereas No 2 has received at least four notable recordings. I much enjoyed the Navarra Quartet’s grippingly fervent traversal (Challenge Classics, 5/11) and can report straight away that these wholly dedicated newcomers also have the measure of this plangently expressive music. Perhaps it’s the Navarra who extract just a touch more colour and drama from the second movement’s ornithological cavalcade, but the Spīķeru are never less than compelling advocates, distilling a most moving spirituality and (towards the end) pantheistic wonder in the powerful concluding Elegy (where Vasks laments man’s destruction of nature). Normunds Šnē’s ingratiatingly airy sound has both presence and bloom to commend it, and this is indeed a release which deserves every success.

-- Andrew Achenbach, Gramophone

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Pēteris Vasks (born 16 April 1946 in Aizpute, Latvia) is a Latvian composer. He trained as a violinist and a double-bass player and played in several Latvian orchestras before entering the State Conservatory in Vilnius in Lithuania to study composition with Valentin Utkin. He started to become known outside Latvia in the 1990s, when Gidon Kremer started championing his works and now is one of the most influential and praised European contemporary composers. Vasks's compositions incorporate archaic, folklore elements from Latvian music with the language of contemporary music.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%93teris_Vasks
https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/peteris-vasks

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Spīķeru String Quartet

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