Episodi e canto perpetuo

Peteris
Vasks was born in April 1946 at Aizpute in Latvia. He studied at Riga and Vilnius
and was a double bass player before he became a composer. The Baltic nations
suffered much from Soviet repression and much of his music captures his
nation’s sense of community and its desire for freedom. This work dates from
before the time at the barricades and the blood in the streets in the early
nineties but it is clearly related to Messiaen’s work Quartet for the End of
Time, written at a concentration camp in 1941. The composer has described his
Trio as a difficult journey through the
realms of distress, disappointment and the suffering of love, which in
particular forms the central point of the canto. There are eight movements
played without a break.

Massive
resonant chords from the piano punctuate the quiet opening bars, which
establish a mood of tense expectation. A big climax is built up and abruptly
cut short, leading us immediately into the Misterioso
Episode. This is described by the composer as a glance at the sleeping earth on
a quiet night. The third movement jumps in immediately with a brief and
fantastic dance, which works up to its climax and leaps straight into the Burlesca. This is a powerful and
aggressive movement with driving rhythms with a savage central section that
reminds us of Shostakovich’s bitter outbursts. The fifth movement, Monologhi, is a series of solo recitatives,
first by the strings and finally the piano, acting as a thoughtful interlude
before the Burlesca returns with
heightened intensity and aggression. A spectacular conclusion on the piano
followed by a long fade lead into Vasks’ homage to the last movement of the End
of Time quartet. A broad-arched melody on the violin opens the movement pianissimo gradually leading into a
passionate song  accompanied all the
while by widely spaced piano chords. Eventually the cello takes over the melody
and finally the two strings together. This leads without pause into the
emotional climax of the work where violin and cello sing in an exposed tessitura accompanied by volcanic chords
in the piano. The long dying close takes the sound to ever clearer heights.