"Peteris Plakidis (1947-2017) is one of the many successful composers of choral music from the Baltic States. It is above all the tradition of the great singing festivals that always prompts composers to enrich the repertoire with strong works.
Peteris Plaikidis’ choral music echoes above all the tradition of vocal polyphony, which inspires the Latvian Radio Choir to sing in a very differentiated and sonorous way. Conductor Sigvards Klava creates a wonderful homogeneity of voices with finely nuanced gradations from delicate, crystalline high soprano to warm, richly shaded middle voices to earthy bass.
Over often medieval-like basic motifs, Klava allows the upper voices to float almost ethereally, but animates them just as much to passionate declamation. The result is a recording of 21 choral movements that above all sustainably underscores the poetic power of Plakidis’ music."
Guy Engels
www.pizzicato.lu
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The Latvian Pēteris Plakidis (1947-2017) is unfortunately not yet as famous in Central Europe as his compatriot of the same first name, Pēteris Vasks, who was born just one year earlier. This is certainly not due to the quality of Plakidis' music. The album "Eternity", which has just been released on the Latvian label Skani, is impressive proof of this. It features a selection from Plakidis' rich repertoire, which he has composed for a cappella choir in various settings since the late 1960s. Except for the two Latin songs "Verti me ad alia" and "Et cognovi" based on texts from the Old Testament, all the songs are in Latvian. As for the other texts, Plakidis makes use of diverse sources. The spectrum ranges from traditional folk tunes to famous authors of his homeland: Ojārs Vācietis, Vizma Belševica, Imants Ziedonis, Jānis Peters, Knuts Skujenieks and others. Subtle political messages are conveyed above all by the songs based on texts by Latvian exile authors such as Zinaīda Lazda, which could hardly be sung in public before the fall of the Iron Curtain. The stylistic "keyboard" on which Plakidis' songs "play" is correspondingly large, but the Baltic tone can be felt everywhere. The Latvian Radio Choir, already one of the best choirs in the world, has a real home game here. You can't sing these songs any better than this.
Burkhard Schäfer
