Pēteris Vasks - Works for Piano Trio (Trio Palladio)

Information

Composer: Pēteris Vasks

• Lonely Angel
• Episodi e canto perpetuo
• Plainscapes

Trio Palladio

Eva Bindere, violin

Kristīna Blaumane, cello

Reinis Zariņš, piano

Date: 2020

Label: Ondine

https://www.ondine.net/index.php?lid=en&cid=2.2&oid=6422

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Review

This release includes the sixth (at least) recording of Vasks’s Episodi e Canto perpetuo but it’s still arguably the least familiar piece here. The composer modelled his piano trio’s shape on that of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time but it’s impossible not to hear an act of homage in the harmonic (and unison) sounds of the work too – a psychedelic, diabolical, bejewelled journey through life’s trials to the reassurance of love featuring a battered old piano. In the movement titled ‘Canto perpetuo’ the violin sings an ecstatic but strained song (violinist Eva Bindere’s tight vibrato is so effective here) before the others join her in an embrace that borders on the suffocating. Transition into the coda is magical, Vasks emerging from Messiaen’s influence as himself.

The other works are key pieces in Vasks’s output and focused examples of his pain-lined aesthetic – the dual nightmares of oppression and a world gone mad as the dark antithesis to the beauty of nature, the promise of faith and a belief in forgiveness and love. Lonely Angel is a straight transcription of the fifth movement of the composer’s String Quartet No 4, in which it represents the latter qualities with mirroring string incantations around a steady, shimmering piano with signature Vasks parallel harmonies and harmonic tension pushing the soaring melody on and on. The performance from these Latvian musicians is as soulful as could be imagined.

That Vasks’s well-delineated music is ripe for re voicing is further in evidence from his own trio version of the instrumental/choral work Plainscapes, in which he imagined a musical picture of Zemgale in the south of Latvia where ‘you can see the starry sky extend right down to the horizon’. Again the three instruments are as characters in this work, which is as much a dramatic three-hander as a broad landscape. And again, the performance – with exquisite gradations of vibrato from the two strings – is invested with rare space, profundity and a sense of deep personal need. Most Vasks discs are worth hearing but this one is a cut above.

-- Andrew Mellor, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/May/Vasks_trio_ODE13432.htm

https://www.wtju.net/peteris-vasks-works-piano-trio-work/

https://www.allmusic.com/album/peteris-vasks-works-for-piano-trio-mw0003344972

https://www.thewholenote.com/index.php/booksrecords2/moderncontempo/30163-peteris-vasks-works-for-piano-trio-trio-palladio

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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/Pēteris_Vasks
https://en.schott-music.com/shop/autoren/peteris-vasks

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Trio Palladio is an ensemble of violinist Eva Bindere, cellist Kristina Blaumane and pianist Reinis Zarins, three established Latvian soloists, avid chamber musicians and acclaimed recording artists. Each of them is laureate of the Grand Music Award of Latvia, and in 2019 they were nominated for this prestigious award as a trio. The trio’s performances have been broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, Polish Radio and Latvian Radio 3. Trio Palladio creates conceptual programmes with rich variety of Classical, Romantic and contemporary chamber music, with particular focus on works by Latvian and Baltic composers.

https://www.triopalladio.com/

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