Pēteris Vasks

Composer

Pēteris Vasks is one of the most famous Latvian composers. During his creative life, he has developed from a young, angry and avant-garde author who speaks the language of modernist music, into a remarkable artist who illustrates the eternal duel between good and evil with the so-called new principles of simplicity, as well as universally understandable sound expression.

In his music, Vasks tells about the basic things — the battle between the darkness and the light, the reflections of nature in the art of sound, echoes of bird songs beloved by the composer, moments of catharsis, the fate of our nation and all humankind with a stamp of the past, the chaos of the present and hope of the future. A major source of inspiration for Vasks is nature, especially the voices of birds, the forest, starry skies and the sea.

A crucial part of Pēteris Vasks’ music is the motif and the themes typical for Latvian folk music — these are not quotes, but sound combinations found in some gene sources, which immediately create a sense of belonging for Latvian music connoisseurs. 

Nowadays, perhaps it’s not easy to visualise the huge momentum that Vasks’ music provided for Latvia’s (then Soviet time) culture in the 80s. It was a clear, thrilling and painful cry at a time when Soviet Latvia as a part of the Soviet Union reached the peak of Brezhnev stagnation, experienced the funerals of three national leaders in the past couple of years and accepted Gorbachev and perestroika, which inevitably led to a Latvian national awakening and, eventually, also to the secession from the USSR.

Photo: Jānis Porietis