Marina GRIBINČIKA (1966)

"AGRONOMIC PROCESS" for cello, piano and percussion

  • Premiere: July 28, 2015



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“When I first heard the wonderful Art-i-Shock trio, I realised that I wanted to compose music for these musicians,” 
says Marina Gribinčika, in discussing her Agronomic Process. 
“I found Agnese on Facebook, and we began a conversation.  Initially I was thinking about a very different composition, but Agnese asked me to adapt it to the concert programme that is based on the seasons of the year.  I came up with the crazy idea of three stages in the growth of an artichoke – planting it in the spring, seeing its blossoms in the summer, and harvesting the fruit in the autumn.” 

Linda LEIMANE (1989)

"SILHOUETTES.BEHAVIORS"  for cello, piano and percussion

  • Premiere: August 8, 2015


audio

http://lindaleimane.lv/











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Linda Leimane is a unique talent among Latvian composers. According to some, she is the most technically masterful of the country’s composers, even more so than her experienced colleagues. Leimane’s music has refined technique, an excellently administered organisation of musical material, and laconically precise expression. The most significant instrument of musical language in Silhouettes. Behaviours is gesture. And in this composition, the gesture is a very fine matter that resembles a slowly changing twilight.

Leimane says:

“It is a pouring out of three individual and changing silhouettes, which has grown out of keeping specific elements and characters within the imagination. Associatively, this is darkness, air, spring, water and silhouettes as clearly expressed profiles, or gestures, the identities of which are secured by their repetition. The behaviour of incorporeal, bodiless sound beings changes every time they appear. In this composition I hear a certain current, or flow, that emerges when one is far from home.

“This work is my experiment in creating a corporeity of music, which is something I strive for in other compositions as well. My ideal is music that, when it is listened to, one loses the ability to distinguish separate parameters; they are located so close to each other that the audible result is something alive, organic and plastic. One of the specific features of musical gesture is that the listener does not need to hear it; that is, the gesture affects the subconsciousness. It’s as if the body feels something familiar, but it might not be doing so on a conscious level. The gesture is inseparably linked with the concept of movement.”

Leimane’s final suggestion for the listener:

“Listen, and at the same time do not listen – so that the gestures inscribe their own contours on your perception.” Text by Dāvis Eņģelis

Rihards DUBRA (1964)

"Les passions d`automne" for cello, piano and percussion (marimba, glockenspiel, other percussion)

  • Premiere: December 12, 2015


audio

Upon first listen, Rihards Dubra’s opus Les passions d’automne, or The Passions of Autumn, might seem like an ardent, outwardly directed work. It is, however, intensely introverted. It is also technically masterful, precise in form and laconic. The content is dense with self-analysis and self-reflection. The taut, escalated ostinato figures (a common and vivid technique used by Dubra) and simple yet convincing dynamic and harmonic contrasts give the piece a dual figurative nature – it contains both the expressive forms of stormy waves and the much deeper, broader and quieter seabed encountered under the churning waters. 

  • With its pulsating and gnawing and inner unrest, Les passions d’automne stands out among Dubra’s other compositions. 

In writing for Art-i-Shock, he has created a very exposed and even personally intimate work that could be interpreted as a confession or a mirror image that reaches into a person’s depths.

Text by Dāvis Eņģelis