We invite you to begin the beautiful Christmas season with a special concert by Olas in a warm festive atmosphere. It will be a musical journey that will usher listeners into the spirit of the 1st Advent, offer an opportunity to immerse themselves in wonderful Christmas sounds, and create an inspiring moment in which light and music meet.
The concert program will feature works by Andrejs Selickis, Georgs Pelēcis, James MacMillan, Johann Sebastian Bach, César Franck, Ferruccio Busoni, and other composers.
Reinis Zariņš is one of Latvia’s most distinguished talents, a master of deeply considered interpretations, a brilliant soloist, a skilled chamber musician, and the creator of conceptual interdisciplinary art projects. Truth and beauty: these are the values the concert pianist seeks in the music he chooses, the interpretations he creates, and his collaborations with others.
Reinis Zariņš says the following about the selected concert program:
“The Advent season encourages us each year to examine ourselves - what we are waiting for and what we hope for. The greatest source and fulfillment of hope is woven into the historical events commonly called Christmas. Yet hope hopes for what has not yet been fulfilled, and precisely this incomplete state is so familiar to us - we await light, awakening, salvation, and progress, but for now all of this remains merely hoped for rather than visible. Hope does not die, but its fulfillment continually eludes us. I have also sought to capture this duality in this Advent program - here there is faith and doubt, seeing with the eyes of the spirit and seeing nothing with the eyes of the flesh, hope for the human condition and sorrow over the human condition.
In addition, I have distinguished the two parts of the concert program in such a way that in the first I have brought together works characterized by the melodic character of folk song - Western and Latvian, as well as Arabic and Romanian, while in the second part the so-called “art music” could be named as the common denominator, in contrast to folk music. This division is conditional, however, since all the composers included are creators of “art music.” The substantial Christmas-related works by Georgs Pelēcis, which frame the first part of the concert, deserve special mention; meanwhile, I have chosen to conclude the second part with César Franck’s unusually powerful opus “Prelude, Chorale and Fugue,” which encompasses all the dualities mentioned above.”
The concert is in two parts, with a 30-minute intermission.
Guests are warmly invited to arrive from 18.15 for a glass of welcome wine and a viewing of the current exhibitions.
May this evening’s 1st Advent concert be a beautiful festive gift for you.
