Lūcija Garūta. Music for Piano.

2017

01.12.2017

LMIC 056

“Music is the breath of the soul,” said Lūcija Garūta. And I believe that is exactly what she did – she wrote music at times when she could not do otherwise.

"This album and indeed my encounter with Garūta’s world began with her Piano Concerto. Among Latvian piano concertos, hers is truly a significant and special composition owing to its unusually acute honesty. And, even though it mediates her very own experience, in it I sometimes also hear the pain of our entire nation. Perhaps that’s because of the folk melodies included within it, for in this work they take on timeless, universal overtones. The other large-scale opus in this album, the Variations,conveys similar power through its use of folk melodies and texts, and through them, it beacons hope. Both of these works are a living testimony to Garūta’s indestructible belief in a bright future, even if such a future can only be found in the afterlife.

Garūta’s combination of femininity and fearlessness, fragility and strength also permeates the shorter pieces on this album. The four Preludes are a true masterpiece recalling Scriabin’s tonal colours; the four different characters expressed in the work are at once united and contrasted. The Meditation, in this version for solo piano, allows us once again to get closer to Garūta’s soul. And the final Little Doll’s Lulling Song came to me completely by accident (or perhaps not so): once when I was visiting Garūta’s apartment in Rīga, I happened to open one of her photo albums, and a small piece of paper fell out of it, upon which this little song was sketched out very lightly in pencil. It was dedicated to the very same little girl to whose memory she dedicated the Piano Concerto seven years later.

This year marks 40 years since Garūta’s passing. In this context, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Daina Pormale, the granddaughter of Garūta’s sister, who with much love and care has been continuously handing down our dear Lūcija’s legacy to me and to future generations.

In short, Garūta reminds me to seek to stay truthful – and for that I thank her."

Reinis Zariņš