2.simfonija "Silts vējš" / 2nd symphony "Warm wind"

"In autumn 2020, I started going on long walks along the Latvian coast. One of the tasks I gave myself was to observe and, on an imagined line in my memory, join up each curve of the shoreline, each turn, my geographical and spatial awareness, the changing textures under my feet, the scents, bird species, weather, my conscious and subconscious thoughts and memories triggered by each point along the line. To record and save it all in a memory movie. One late, cold autumn evening, the most unusual thing I came across was a warm wind: a sudden, warm, enveloping wind welling up from the dunes; a feeling of sacred protection, refuge, safety. Right next to the sea, so fickle, so cool, often harsh, very beautiful, close. I began working on the symphony in the year I became the recipient of a State Culture Capital Foundation stipend. I worked on it while thinking of an unknown future, but then I received Andris Poga’s invitation to become the Composer in Residence for the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra. At that point, I had almost finished the symphony, and it is dedicated to my friends in music: the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Andris Poga. The main aim of the piece is to resolve problems of durability, colour and depth, which can be considered with particular enjoyment and without specific content in this kind of large-scale opus, highlighting both foregrounds and perspectives, distant fast processes and the close-up reality of slowness, dissonant fanfares in parallel dimensions layered over blissful internal harmony. During the writing process, I saw this gradualness and simultaneous existence like the gradualness of a seascape. Like the enthralling, unknown line of a story." - Andris Dzenītis

Premiere 05.03.2022 / The concert hall Great Amber, Liepāja / LNSO, conductor Andris Poga