The choral music of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks offers an ideal approach to new music for people who think they don't like new music. His music is certainly not going to be mistaken for that of a traditional tonal composer or a neo-Romantic; it's full of swoops, clusters, and startling sonorities. While he includes a generous sampling of 20th and 21st century techniques in his compositional toolkit, that's not all he's got in there; he also uses tonal harmonies, recognizable forms, memorable melodies, and it wouldn't be ...
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The choral music of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks offers an ideal approach to new music for people who think they don't like new music. His music is certainly not going to be mistaken for that of a traditional tonal composer or a neo-Romantic; it's full of swoops, clusters, and startling sonorities. While he includes a generous sampling of 20th and 21st century techniques in his compositional toolkit, that's not all he's got in there; he also uses tonal harmonies, recognizable forms, memorable melodies, and it wouldn't be stretching to characterize his music as essentially sweet and sensual without being cloying. Most importantly, he combines his disparate materials in ways that have an inescapably direct emotional impact, often with the simple communicativeness of Eastern European minimalist mystics, with whom he could reasonably be grouped. Vasks is a prolific choral composer and the eight secular pieces on this 2012 album represent a sampling of some of his most appealing works. Most are a cappella...
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