PATER NOSTER

Latvian Radio Choir & Sinfonietta Riga, Sigvards Klava

De Letse componist Pïteris Vasks (*1946) is een van de beroemdste componisten uit de Baltische staten. Zelfs in de Sovjettijd wilde de componist het volk een stem geven door middel van zijn muziek, vooral omdat hij zelf ook werd blootgesteld aan intimidatie door de Sovjetautoriteiten vanwege zijn geloofsovertuiging. Het Letse Radio Kamerkoor en het Sinfonietta Riga onder leiding van Sigvards Klava hebben enkele van de heilige koorwerken opgenomen die, zoals veel van zijn wereldlijke koorwerken, niets minder zijn dan een zelfverlichting door middel van zang.

Vasks:
 Dona nobis pacem
 Missa
 Pater noster

"…the beauty of the music is hardly disputable. Some commentators find his current style too simplistic, neo-Romantic and sentimental… but even they must acknowledge the superb performances here: clear, perfectly paced, beautifully balanced and sumptuously textured, with just the right pitch of emotion."
BBC Music Magazine 2007 *****

"In the booklet interview, Peteris Vasks notes that during the Soviet rule in Latvia composition of sacred choral music was heavily discouraged.
Personal necessity as well, it seems, also put him off writing the Pater noster his Protestant minister father kept asking for. Instrumental music was of greater importance. When he did write a Pater noster (1991), it was in a simpler, more consonant style than much of his earlier work, expressively close to the 'holy minimalism' common to a number of Baltic composers, but Vasks's triadic style – which he feels essential for sacred music – shares little with them. A short, peaceful meditation, it is reverentially performed by the Latvian Radio Choir. So, too, is Dona nobis pacem (1996), inhabiting the same evocative sound world. The Missa (2000, rev 2000-05) is a different matter. True, the expressive idiom is the same, but Vasks here invests his ideas in more musically satisfying forms. The use of string orchestral accompaniment is reminiscent in places, the Sanctus especially, of English music and sounds a touch like what an early Mass setting by Tippett might have sounded like. There are sympathetic echoes (no doubt coincidental) of Howells in the Benedictus and overlong Agnus Dei, too."
Gramophone Classical Music Guide - 2010