Camerata Silesia / Anna Szostak - NOSPR

The piece of Czułego, ciepłego słońca [For a sun tender and warm]owes its artistic life to the Camerata Silesia, which premiered it at the seat of NOSPR in 2019. It was then that Ivan Taranenko – the work’s Ukrainian composer, a pianist and researcher working at the Department of Composition at the Ukrainian State Academy of Music in Kyiv – remarked that the experience of the eponymous tenderness of sun rays, God’s grace and mercy, resounds with a hymn praising the Creator. The spiritual element is what connects him and Pēteris Vasks, the greatest Latvian composer. It was particularly in vocal music that Vasks found a special space to share his sensitivity. His sonic world is permeated with reflection on Christian values and the meaning of existence, as well as on nature and its fate in the hands of contemporary humanity. He expresses his concerns and hopes in a varied language: from contemplative and simplified harmonies to heart-rending culminations, reaching for neoclassical forms, as well as for the modal roots of Latvian music. All that to fulfil his credo: “Most people do not have beliefs, love, or ideals any more. The spiritual dimension has been lost. It is my intention to provide nourishment for the soul and this is what I proclaim in my works.”

[Agnieszka Nowok-Zych, translated by Mikołaj Witkowski]

Duration of the concert: approx. 60 minutes