On Tuesday, July 15th, at 7:00 PM, the Pārventa Library will host the concert-performance “Letters to the Muses” featuring a trio of musicians: clarinetist Anna Gāgane and violist Pēteris Trasuns from the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO), along with Latvian pianist Linda Leine, who lives in Hamburg. Actor Gerds Lapoška will join the musicians with readings of prose fragments. The prose and dramaturgy concept was created by dramaturge Linda Rudene.
The concert will feature music by Maija Einfelde, Anita Mieze, Klāra Šūmane, Ēriks Ešenvalds, Ģirts Kurtāgs, and Roberts Šūmanis. At the heart of the program are the muses—sometimes real, sometimes mythical beings who have inspired artists, writers, and musicians for thousands of years. The diverse music from different eras and styles is united by the presence and creative power of remarkable women.
In this somewhat unusual concert format, the flow of music will be complemented by readings of prose fragments, inviting the audience to reflect on what a muse truly is and how to summon this keeper of inspiration. For some, a muse is a very real person, like Klāra Vīka-Šūmane was to Roberts Šūmanis. For others, it is a set of circumstances, as for Maija Einfelde, who reflects the complexities of life in her works. And for yet others, it is another artist’s work—for example, composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, who created the piece “Butterflies” especially for this concert-performance, drawing inspiration from the works of Imants Ziedonis.
The concert features a group of young and creatively enthusiastic LNSO musicians alongside the talented Latvian concert pianist Linda Leine, who lives in Hamburg. Although this trio is performing together for the first time, they share a common musical background — Anna and Linda, together with cellist Kristaps Bergs, perform in Trio Fabel, while Pēteris and Anna began their chamber music journey together in school, performing in a trio with the same instrumental lineup as expected at the concert.
On stage, the musicians will be joined by actor Gerds Lapoška, whose narration will blend seamlessly with the atmosphere created by the music, uniting music and prose in a single breath. The letters to six different muses, specially written for the concert by Linda Rudene, will invite the audience into an inner dialogue and reflection on the creative power and identity of women, while also providing informative insights that help understand the respective musical eras and the composers’ inner worlds.
One of the central pieces in the concert program is Roberts Šūmanis’s Fairy Tale Stories. Although Šūmanis often supplemented his works with programmatic narratives, this piece—whose title literally invites thoughts of fairy tale scenes brought to life in music—is left without figurative explanations, allowing listeners’ imaginations to roam freely.
The concert will also feature the rarely performed first romance from Klāra Vīka-Šūmane’s Three Romances for clarinet and piano (originally for violin and piano). These were composed in the summer of 1853, when Klāra resumed composing after a long creative hiatus. This is also one of her last works—after Roberts Šūmanis’s death, Klāra devoted herself largely to preserving her husband’s creative legacy by regularly performing his compositions in concerts.
The program includes Hommage à R. Sch. by Hungarian modernist György Kurtág, completed in 1990, though its composition began much earlier, around 1970. The Hommage consists of six miniatures, with the last being longer than all the previous ones combined. The work reflects characteristic themes from Šūmanis’s piano music (such as Eusebius, Master Raro, and others), and the chosen instrumentation is the same as in Šūmanis’s Fairy Tale Stories.
One of the concert’s highlights will be Ēriks Ešenvalds’s composition Butterflies for clarinet, viola, and piano. Inspired by the works of Imants Ziedonis, the composer offers a free interpretation that, through the prism of his composition, tells a story about the muse, divinity, and the feminine figure as a source of creative inspiration.
The program features two prominent yet very different Latvian female composers. Maija Einfelde has always been an individualist in Latvian music, never aligning herself with particular movements or groups of like-minded artists. Her active creative career has spanned more than half a century, yet she has consistently approached the typical trends of her time from less conventional perspectives.
In Einfelde’s music, beauty intertwines with sadness, harshness, gloom, and irony in countless, sometimes inseparable combinations. Her music is measured, restrained, and often very severe, as the composer herself has acknowledged: “Life is not so beautiful to write beautiful music.” The composition Before the Sun Sets for clarinet, viola, and piano was written in 1994 and dedicated to the memory of Voldemārs Einfelds.
The work Somnium (“Dream”) by Latvian composer Anita Mieze, who lives in Switzerland and has gained international recognition and experience, is dedicated to clarinetist Anna Gāgane, who premiered the piece in February 2021 at a Latvijas Radio 3 Klasika concert. One of the inspirations for the composition was the 17th-century novella Somnium by Johannes Kepler. The composer describes her work as follows: “It provides a vivid depiction of how Earth might look when viewed from the Moon. Imagination undoubtedly plays a significant role in our daily lives, so I invite listeners to dream!”
The concert is financially supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation.
Tickets: Available at Biļešu Paradīze box offices – 15 EUR; for students, pupils, and pensioners – 7 EUR.
Link to purchase tickets online: https://www.bilesuparadize.lv/lv/event/154435
