On Saturday evening, the French ensemble “Les Épopées” offered the brightest fragments of Italian baroque opera music, while on Sunday, the Belgian chamber ensemble “Het Collectief” visited the concert hall for the fourth time, this time playing the golden repertoire of 20th century chamber music, informs the representative of the concert hall, Anita Lazdeniece.
Baroque music experts – the ensemble “Les Épopées” conductor and harpsichordist Stéphane Fizet (Stephane Fuget) led by the program “Monteverdi and the Venetian Opera” took the audience as if in person, live, to the time when the opera genre experienced rapid development and flourished in the flower of arias and passionate recitatives – the 17th century.
The musicians discovered the gilded brilliance of this era in the brightest passages from the works of the Italian great Claudio Monteverdi, his student Francesco Cavalli and the following generations of composers Antonio Sartorio and Carlo Pallavicino.
Excerpts from operas by Domenico Freschi and Marcantonio Dziani, which have not been staged since the 17th century, were also performed.
The audience got to know the content and drama of these works with an amazing soloist – soprano Claire Lefiliatra (Claire Lefilliatre), mezzo-soprano Izabella Drie (Isabelle Druet), viola Melodies Rivio (Melody Ruvio) a tenora Sirila Ovitī (Cyril Auvity) in the performance, who vividly brought the characters’ characters to life on the stage of the concert hall, allowing us to understand their experiences, passions and joys beyond the boundaries of language.
In arias of opera fragments, the violinist Elenas Uzelas (Helene Houzel) and Sofia Iwamura (Sophie Iwamura), viola da gamba master Claire Gautreau (Claire Gautrot) and cellist Alice Kokartas (Alice Coquart) harmonious interplay, while in the ritunelles – the instrumental fragments of the opera – the content was revealed only by the harpsichord (Stefāns Fizet) and the theorba (Lea Masson – Lea Masson).
The next day, chamber music aesthetes from Belgium came to the concert hall – the ensemble “Het Collectief”, as a trio, offering the audience music that is rarely heard in Latvia – works by Arnold Šenberg, Charles Ives, Witold Lutoslavski and Leoš Janāček.
Virtuoso musicians – violinist Wilbert Arts (Wibert Aerts), cellist Martein Winks (Martin Vink) and pianist Thomas Dieltjens (Thomas Dieltjens) opened the concert with the Trio for violin, cello and piano by Charles Ives, the godfather of American modern music, in which the author reflected on his studies at Yale University. Philosophical reflections, the chaos created by student parties, and a peaceful holy moment were revealed in this work.
Afterwards, the virtuoso Partita of Polish avant-garde master Witold Lutoslavski invited to an expressive dialogue between the timbres of violin and piano.
The second part of the concert was opened with bright musical images by the Czech genius Leoš Janáček’s “Fairytale”, which plays on Vasiliy Zhukovsky’s powerful poem “Fairy Tale of Tsar Berendej”. The listeners of these stories could live in their own version, hearing the duets of the main characters in the cello and piano parts.
At the end, Austrian visionary Arnolds Schoenberg’s sensual and sophisticated sound chamber painting “Enlightened Night” was solemnly performed, which was played in a special overture for violin, cello and piano and was the source of inspiration for the entire content of the program.
After the concert, visitors met the musicians in an informal atmosphere.
