Memorial concert dedicated to composer Guy Kancheli at the Sacred Music Festival / Article / LSM.lv

One of the special summer academic music festivals – the International Sacred Music Festival, which is taking place for the 23rd time – continues its sound. The festival began with the solo concert of the outstanding organist Iveta Apkalna. On August 20, one of the central events of the festival was dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Georgian composer Gija Kančeli. –

The mastery of the choir “Latvija” and the zeal of conductor Maris Sirmas in music have attracted the most outstanding contemporary composers – John Tavener, Arvo Pert, Krzysztof Penderecki, and especially musical and human sincerity for several years for the choir and Maris Sirmays

Among the performers, next to the choir “Latvija” were the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, trumpet player Jānis Porietis and viola player Maksims Risanovs.

The outstanding Georgian composer Gija Kančeli has been closely connected with the life of Latvian music since 2002, when his author’s concert took place at the Riga Dome Cathedral. Since then, he has had several unforgettable meetings with this personality, both for the choir “Latvija” and soloists Gidon Kremer, Inga Kalna, Egils silins, as well as the “Xylem Trio”, but special sincerity unites him with conductor Māris Sirmo and, since his youth, with Raimondu Paulu.

In commemoration of the late composer, on August 20, the concert featured the last opus of his life, “The Volatile World” – a beauty-filled, muted work.

The concert program also included the premiere of Rihards Dubra’s dedication to the composer, Absolve Domine.

The culmination of the memorial concert was Gija Kančeli’s outstanding vocal symphonic work “Stiksa” with the full performance of Māris Sirmas, choir “Latvija”, orchestra and viola player Maksims Risanovs.

“In his book of poetry, Roman Hoffman dedicates wonderful words to the composer – Kancheli is supposedly stuck in the sky. I also have exactly the feeling when these short expressive phrases are heard – as if he is stuck in some fragments of memory – about childhood, love of homeland, infinite loneliness and something unattainable, to heaven, ”notes Maksims Risanovs.

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