“Pēters Pētersons: Contributions to Latvia’s Cultural Revival and Large-scale Productions”

The versatile talents of Pēters Pētersons – translator, playwright, director – are the reason why he was often invited as the author and also the director of large-scale productions. One of those was a concert in honor of Andrejas Upiš’s 70th anniversary at the Opera, for which the libretto was composed and also staged by Pētersons. He invited Imantas Kalniņas to write the music for this concert, with whom he had already created a wonderful show with the poetry of Imantas Ziedonis “Motorcycle”. The two had also worked together on Peterson’s dramatization of Dostoyevsky’s Idiot, where the music of Imanta Kalniņš left an unforgettable impression. Thanks to Pētersons, Upīš’s anniversary celebrations did not become another ordinary event or a tribute to time, but helped to create an autonomous masterpiece – the great oratorio by Imanta Kalniņas with Upīš’s text “Morning act”, for which Upīš’s poetry and texts were selected and arranged, actually dramatized, by Pēteris Peterson.

When the Revival began, Peterson’s talent was useful in organizing several important events of the time. Folklore festival “Baltica” held in June 1988 is remembered as an event in which Dainis Stalts brought the Latvian flag into the arena for the first time. And the entire course of the festival in Riga and Ogre was like a sip of fresh water that lifted and united people around folklore. And the creator of this exciting event was Pēteris Pētersons.

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Before the founding congress of the Popular Front on October 7, 1988, a demonstration organized by the Popular Front took place, after which people went to Mežapark. There, on the stage of the Song Festival, performed by choirs, a concert was held with speeches by leaders of the Awakening and state officials, which is vividly imprinted in people’s memories as an event. And here, the director of this concert was Pēteris Pētersons.

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Together with the then director of the Nature Museum, Vili Krūmin and musicologist Arnoldas Klotin, they had created the repertoire and the list of speakers, as well as took care of the concert right there on the stage as a kind of management group.

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As we remember, emotions hit a very high wave at that time. The gathered people eagerly caught every word of the speakers, while the songs sang along. In my father’s papers, I still have a sheet with the progress of the concert with all his notes.

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Another important moment in the history of Latvia, to which Peterson contributed, was the 1990 General Song Festival, where for the first time after many years, songs about Lenin and Soviet compositions did not have to be paid tribute to in the repertoire, and in addition, groups from exile participated widely in this festival for the first time. Peterson was the director of the Song Festival, and I remember how miraculously the bells moved by the choirs of exile rang out that time.

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Runcim has always had a good sense of scale and space, a brilliant talent as a director, but in these big events he could not afford to simply call up the crews, as he was used to doing in the theater, where his colleagues had learned to understand him by half a word. His sometimes brilliant ideas needed grounding. And this role in large mass events was performed as an assistant by the then young graduate of the Conservatory’s Culture Workers course, now the director of the Smilģa Theater Museum, professor Jānis Siliņš.

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