Pēteris Vasks - Vox Amoris; etc. (Alina Pogostkina; Juha Kangas)

Information

Composer: Pēteris Vasks

1. Vox Amoris, fantasia per violino ed archi
2. Distant Light, concerto for violin and string orchestra
3. Lonely Angel, meditation for violin and string orchestra

Alina Pogostkina, violin
Sinfonietta Rīga
Juha Kangas, conductor

Date: 2012
Label: Wergo

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Review

Listening to this disc straight through might not be the best way to appreciate it: the three pieces for violin and string orchestra by Latvian composer P?teris Vasks that it features all occupy broadly the same slow-moving, diatonic, melancholy sound world. But once Vasks’s music gets under your skin, there’s no denying its emotional impact, and young Russian-born violinist Alina Pogostkina’s compelling performances brilliantly capture the pieces’ sometimes elusive and shifting moods.

Her playing is clear and focused throughout, with a strong sense of line and a sure feeling for pacing – all put to good use in conveying the composer’s rather meandering melodies. In the love-themed Vox amoris (2009) (which sometimes strays dangerously close to Barber’s famous Adagio), Pogostkina is appropriately passionate but never overstates things. The longer ‘Distant Light’ (1997) has a broader canvas, moving from folk-like melodies to a terrifying danse macabre, and draws more assertive playing from Pogostkina, who loosens some of her usual firm control in the piece’s increasingly unhinged cadenza, to great effect. The short Lonely Angel (2006), Vasks’s orchestration of the last movement of his Fourth String Quartet, showcases her immaculate bowing in a seamless, seemingly endless melody.

There’s solid support from the Sinfonietta Riga players under Juha Kangas, but recorded sound shines the spotlight so strongly on the soloist that occasionally the orchestral detail is slightly obscured.

-- David Kettle, The Strad

More reviews:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vasks-Vox-Amoris-Alina-Pogostkina/dp/B007K0PSQE

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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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Alina Pogostkina (born 18 November 1983 in Leningrad) is a Russian-born German violinist. Pogostkina began playing the violin at the age of four and gave her first concerts at the age of five. She studied at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler in Berlin, where she was a student of Antje Weithaas. Pogostkina has competed with success in several international violin competitions, including the 1997 Louis Spohr Competition and the 2005 International Jean Sibelius Violin Competition (first prize). Pogostkina has performed with many of the world's major orchestras. She plays a Stradivarius Sasserno (1717).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Pogostkina
http://www.alinapogostkina.de/

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Juha Kangas (born 1945 in Ostrobothnian region of Kaustinen, Finland) is a Finnish conductor and violist. Kangas studied in Helsinki at the Sibelius Academy with well established composers such as Rautavaara, Heininen and Sallinen, and with legendary Professor of Violin Onni Suhonen. In 1972 Kangas founded a chamber orchestra whose members, aged between 10 and 11, were all students at the Kokkola Conservatory, where he taught as teacher of the violin. Over the years this ensemble grew into the Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra. As a conductor, Kangas helped establish many Nordic and Baltic composers.
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Kangas-Juha.htm

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