Johann de May’s Opus will sing the autumn performance of the Windstream Festival and the new season of the Riga Orchestra / Article

With the concert “Kazanova on Planet Earth” on October 2 in the Grand Guild, the orchestra “Riga” will open the autumn performance of the 12th festival “Windstream” and the new concert season. With the participation of cellist Erik Kirchfeld and women’s vocal sextet, the music program of the Dutch composer Johann de Meij for wind orchestra will be performed at the concert under the direction of conductor Kaspars Adamsons, the representatives of the orchestra informed.

The Dutch composer and conductor Johann de Maye (1953), who lives in New York, USA, is one of the world’s most sought-after composers of original music and arrangements for wind orchestras – in October his music will be performed in concert halls in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan and the USA.

De Meij began to learn about the specifics of the wind orchestra as a musician and arranger long before studying at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he studied conducting and trombone. He began his career as a composer internationally with the successful writing of the First Symphony “King of the Rings” at the age of 31, which at the time, in the 1980s, was one of the few large-format compositions in the world of wind orchestra repertoire, the orchestra said. When composing, de Meijs often draws inspiration from the world of visual art, music history and literature. The three opuses performed by the orchestra “Riga” are no exception.

Erik Kirchfeld’s cello voice will reveal the world-famous female charmer’s adventures in a concert for cello with the Kazanova Orchestra (2000). Listeners will be able to follow the most intense episodes of Casanova’s adventurous life: arrest and arrival in the infamous Piombi prison in Venice, life in prison and flight, the organizers revealed. De Meij dedicated this piece to Italian opera master Giacomo Puccini.

The idea for the 2009 Dutch Masters Suite de May was born by looking at the works of Dutch Golden Age painters at the National Museum in Amsterdam. The orchestra will play the third – closing part of the suite “Prince’s Day”. It is also called a painting created by Jan Steen in the 17th century, in which the painter depicted the joy of the people in a tavern, celebrating the birth of Prince William III.

The Third Symphony “Planet Earth” (2006), in which a female vocal sextet conducted by Inese Romancāne will join the orchestra, will sound like an “ode to the energy of life on our planet”. The composer intends the symphony as a peculiar continuation of Gustav Holst’s famous orchestral suite “Planet”.

“While de Maya’s music can really be heard Casanova opening the prison roof and people enjoying the pub, the composer tries to distance herself from direct illustrationism in her work. The abstraction and flight of thought in this composer’s music is much broader. Mathematical, structural direction is important to him, but above all it is this spiritual, sensitive heart, which is revealed in his melodies and captivates the listener, ”revealed conductor Kaspars Ādamsons.

On October 10, an ambitious closing concert of the “Windstream” festival “Cathedral and Rock” is expected, in which the new work of the founders of the legendary Latvian rock band “Cathedral” Vilnius Šmīdbergs and Gunārs Šimkus will premiere. The concert will also feature the historical “Concerto for a Group with Orchestra” by the British composer John Lord (“Deep Purple”).

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