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Péteris Vasks: Piano Trio; Piano Quartet (2008)

Posted By: Piterets
Péteris Vasks: Piano Trio; Piano Quartet (2008)

Péteris Vasks: Piano Trio; Piano Quartet
Contemporary Classical | 2008 | 65:05 | FLAC, cue, no log | Front cover | 277 MB

Trio Parnassus: Yamei Yu, violin; Michael Groß, violoncello; Chia Chou, piano
Avri Levitan, viola

“Written in 1985, the Episodi e canto perpetuo… grippingly charts, in Vasks's words, "a painful journey through misery, disappointment and suffering towards love…" Marvellously recorded by MDG, the Trio Parnassus give a highly persuasive account…” Gramophone Magazine, January 2009

Pēteris Vasks was born in 1946 in Latvia and by 1970 he was already an excellent violin and double bass player. Between 1973 and 1978 he studied composition, but it was only after the fall of the Berlin Wall that his gifts started being appreciated. Since 1994, he has been an honorary member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and in 1996 he was named the "main composer" at the Stockholm Festival of New Music. A resident of Riga, Vasks is held in high esteem in the former Soviet state and his works are much sought after all throughout the continent. His 1985 "Episodi" was written as homage to Oliver Messiaen and is full of a yearning for freedom that is understandable in those years behind the Iron Curtain. The six-part Quartet is an impressive work altogether, full of emotional tension and anguish that are almost hammer blow like in scope and power. It goes without saying that the well established Trio Parnassus play both works with authority and masterly ability aided by the violist Avri Levitan who is also a top-class player. Copyright © 2008 by Gerald Fenech www.classical.net

Review by James Leonard At the climaxes of both these chamber works by Latvian composer Péteris Vasks are love songs. The eight-movement piano trio called Episodi e Canto perpetuo from 1985 reaches its peak with the achingly beautiful Canto perpetuo while the six-movement Quartet for piano from 2000-2001 achieves its apogee in the searingly effective Canto principale. Vasks harmonic language is fundamentally tonal, though with some fairly fearsome dissonances, and his sensibility is resolutely post-modernist, though shot through with a neo-romantic expressivity. Performed here with insight and strength by the Trio Parnassus, Vasks works hard to be understood by his listeners, and though his expressive range is wide and deep, the Parnassus players get it all to make musical and dramatic sense. Recorded in transparent yet palpable digital sound by Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm, this disc deserves to be heard by fans of the composer and by listeners who like contemporary music of the not especially fearsome variety. www.allmusic.com

Vasks wrote this piano trio in 1985; he describes it as “a painful journey through misery, disappointment and suffering towards love,” and dedicates the piece to Olivier Messiaen. The French master’s influence is all over this beautiful work, with many echoes from the Quatuor pour le fin de temps. There are the huge cluster chords on the piano, the oddly lurching rhythmic effects, and most tellingly, grand, arching crescendos of intense emotional power, reminiscent of Messiaen’s two magnificent louanges (praises) from the Quartet. www.arkivmusic.com



Episodi e Canto perpetuo (1985)
for violin, violoncello and piano
(Hommage à Olivier Messiaen)

Quartet (2000/2001)
for violin, viola, violoncello and piano


Audio CD (August 5, 2008)
CD: MDG 303 1513-2
TT: 65:05

Download Links:
Part 1
Part 2

Previous Vasks release is here.


Coming up next:

NOW Ensemble's debut album NOW (2008)

(released by indie label New Amsterdam Records),

which was named one of the year's best classical albums by New Yorker music critic Alex Ross.