December 03, 2009
A new catalogue covering nearly the entire history of Latvian symphonic music has been published by the Latvian Music Information Centre.
Titled Latvian Symphonic Music, the catalogue begins in 1880 with Andrejs Jurjāns’ “Symphonic Allegro,” which is considered the first Latvian symphonic work, and ends in 2008.
Compiled by composer Mārīte Dombrovska, and produced by the Latvian Music Information Centre in cooperation with the Latvian Academy of Music and the National Library of Latvia, the book lists more than 1,700 symphonic works of 144 Latvian composers, from Ādolfs Ābele to Arvīds Žilinskis.
The text of the catalogue is in Latvian and in English, with English translations for all of the works, as well as notes about instrumentation, time of the work, and, if applicable, the publisher of the score and if a recording is commercially available.
The catalogue also includes a reference list for all abbreviations used in the catalogue, and is divided into two sections—symphonic music and vocal symphonic music.
One can find all the symphonic works composed by well known Latvian composers such as Pēteris Vasks, Jānis Ivanovs and Artūrs Maskats, as well as diaspora Latvian composers such as Pēteris Aldiņš, Dace Aperāne and Andrejs Jansons.
For further information, visit the Web site of the Latvian Music Information Centre, www.lmic.lv.
Egils Kaljo is an American-born Latvian from the New York area who lives in Rīga, Latvia. When not working in the information technology field, he sings in the Latvian Academy of Culture mixed choir Sõla, does occasional translation work, and has been known to sing and play guitar at the Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs in Old Rīga. Kaljo began listening to Latvian music as soon as he was able to put a record on a record player, and still has old Bellacord 78 rpm records lying around somewhere.
