![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Forgotten Masterpiece Friday: Lucija Garuta, Piano Concerto
It's Forgotten Masterpiece Friday!
Lucija Garuta (1902-1977) is regarded today as one of Latvia's two greatest composers, and during her lifetime was sometimes described as "the female Rachmaninoff," but her music is rarely performed outside the former Soviet Union. Garuta was one of the most prominent chamber musicians in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the rehearsal pianist for the Latvian National Opera and a professor of composition and music theory at the Latvian Conservatory for decades.
Though she studied composition in Paris with Paul Dukas in the 1920s, she only focused on composition after 1940, when a serious illness forced her to cease her activities as a touring pianist. In 1944, she composed her best-known work, the cantata Dievs, Tava zeme deg! (God, your land is burning!), which is regarded as the most important of all Latvian musical pieces. Its premiere, at the Riga cathedral with Garuta herself playing the organ, took place amidst the liberation of Riga from Nazi German occupation, and the sounds of battle outside the cathedral could be heard on the audio recording. Ironically, it was the fame of Dievs, Tava zeme deg! that doomed Garuta to obscurity after her death. The cantata was eventually adopted as a symbol of the Latvian independence movement, which resulted in Garuta's Latvian-language vocal music as well as some of her music based on Latvian folk themes being banned by Soviet authorities from 1960 until 1990.
Garuta's piano concerto, composed in 1952 and premiered in 1955, escaped censorship but nonetheless received far less attention than it deserves because of its composer's forced obscurity. The sparkling piano writing and grand orchestral gestures clearly mark this concerto as part of the late Romantic tradition running from Tchaikovsky through Rachmaninoff, but with a distinct voice of its own. Garuta dedicated the concerto to the memory of her niece, who had died of a heart condition in 1950, perhaps motivating the "from darkness to light" aesthetic of the entire work. The slow movement is subtitled "In memoriam" and incorporates two Latvian funeral hymns.
Movements:
I. Lento pesante - Allegro sostenuto
II. In memoriam: Grave (14:43)
III. Maestoso - Allegro scherzando (23:09)
Lucija Garuta (1902-1977) is regarded today as one of Latvia's two greatest composers, and during her lifetime was sometimes described as "the female Rachmaninoff," but her music is rarely performed outside the former Soviet Union. Garuta was one of the most prominent chamber musicians in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the rehearsal pianist for the Latvian National Opera and a professor of composition and music theory at the Latvian Conservatory for decades.
Though she studied composition in Paris with Paul Dukas in the 1920s, she only focused on composition after 1940, when a serious illness forced her to cease her activities as a touring pianist. In 1944, she composed her best-known work, the cantata Dievs, Tava zeme deg! (God, your land is burning!), which is regarded as the most important of all Latvian musical pieces. Its premiere, at the Riga cathedral with Garuta herself playing the organ, took place amidst the liberation of Riga from Nazi German occupation, and the sounds of battle outside the cathedral could be heard on the audio recording. Ironically, it was the fame of Dievs, Tava zeme deg! that doomed Garuta to obscurity after her death. The cantata was eventually adopted as a symbol of the Latvian independence movement, which resulted in Garuta's Latvian-language vocal music as well as some of her music based on Latvian folk themes being banned by Soviet authorities from 1960 until 1990.
Garuta's piano concerto, composed in 1952 and premiered in 1955, escaped censorship but nonetheless received far less attention than it deserves because of its composer's forced obscurity. The sparkling piano writing and grand orchestral gestures clearly mark this concerto as part of the late Romantic tradition running from Tchaikovsky through Rachmaninoff, but with a distinct voice of its own. Garuta dedicated the concerto to the memory of her niece, who had died of a heart condition in 1950, perhaps motivating the "from darkness to light" aesthetic of the entire work. The slow movement is subtitled "In memoriam" and incorporates two Latvian funeral hymns.
Movements:
I. Lento pesante - Allegro sostenuto
II. In memoriam: Grave (14:43)
III. Maestoso - Allegro scherzando (23:09)