2006 Composers

Photo: Schott Promotion	Son of a Protestant minister and a reformed doublebassist, Peteris Vasks is Latvia’s foremost composer. A Quixotic ‘sad optimist’, his largely programmatic music deals with the beauty of life and the relation of man to nature, railing against its ecological and moral destruction. Vasks’ musical style openly acknowledges its inheritance from the Polish school of Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Górecki, together with elements of Mahler, Sibelius and iconic American composer George Crumb. And yet the fusion of these strands with archaic folkloric elements produces a fresh, indigenous voice. His depictions of the struggle of the purity and simplicity of folksong and birdsong against a tide of chaos and toxicity creates a fitting metaphor for the emergence of the Latvian state from under the Soviet yoke. ‘There has been so much bloodshed and destruction and yet love’s power and idealism have helped keep the world in balance.’

Photo: Georges Lentz	Georges Lentz If Pythagoras’ music of the spheres was made audible, it would probably sound like the music of Georges Lentz. His grand project entitled Caeli enarrant… ‘the heavens declare…’ (from Psalm XIX, and the same text, incidentally, which opens Reich’s Tehillim) is an awestruck and almost fearful response to the beauties and mysteries of the universe; a massive, personal creative undertaking from which this intense, almost obsessive composer is painstakingly extracting concert works. The results, however, are not sterile cabbalistic exercises, but a unique voice whose music is genuinely moving despite its brittle austerity and unearthliness; and captures some of the most evocative silences imaginable. He has exchanged his native Luxembourg for Australia, where he has been resident since 1990, drawing further inspiration from the southern nightskies and the dreaming pointillism of Aboriginal art.

Photo: Alice Arnold	Steve Reich “There’s just a handful of living composers who can legitimately claim to have altered the direction of musical history and Steve Reich is one of them.” THE GUARDIAN Universally applauded as ‘the most original musical thinker of our time’ and one of the great composers of the modern age, Steve Reich celebrates his 70th birthday this year. Labelled as a founding father of Minimalism, Steve Reich has turned preconceptions of music on their head and influenced not only generations of classical composers, but also such rock artists as King Crimson and Brian Eno. The thumbprint of his musical style – the extended evolution of small, beautifully simple units, reflects his own constant creative progression, which shows no sign of diminishing at 70.

Photo: Universal Edition/ Eric Marinitsch	Arvo Pärt Arvo Pärt is at the centre of the movement which has become known as New Spirituality – a musical philosophy, which, for Pärt at least, came out of a long period of creative silence and introspection, and emerged from under the aggressively secular cloud of the Soviet state. This is a pared-down, purified music, which delights in a halo of bell-like sonorities surrounding perfect single notes: and yet this simplicity sustains some of the most hauntingly beautiful and profoundly moving pieces. His music eschews worldly seduction: in spite of this – or perhaps because of it – it has become spectacularly and universally popular. Even in Estonia, Arvo was getting the same feeling that we were all getting. […] I love his music, and I love the fact that he is such a brave, talented man. […] He’s completely out of step with the zeitgeist and yet he’s enormously popular, which is so inspiring. His music fulfils a deep human need that has nothing to do with fashion. STEVE REICH

VALE OF GLAMORGAN	FESTIVAL OF MUSIC 2006	PERFORMERS 2006
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