To commemorate and promote this music, in 2022, Linda Leine recorded this stunning piano cycle in the recording studio of Liepāja Concert Hall Great Amber, and released the double album Seasons with the National Recording Label Skani.Since the Seasons cycle is rather extensive, only some parts of it, the music of Spring, Autumn, and New Year, will be performed at the concert. The pianist herself describes the pieces: “Pelēcis’ music speaks to me. It inspires something special in me. I feel very happy when I listen to it.”

Nowadays, Pelēcis’ music can be heard at various music events in a broad range of genres. Aside from Latvian folk songs and poetry, there is also the collection of Orthodox chants and other interactions with the spiritual world, as well as dedications to important persons of various ages and cultures. The work heavily features nature and man as a source and expression of euphoria. The composer himself reveals: “All of my creative inspiration comes from music, from euphoria as the perfect reflection, or the origin of embodiment. Yearning for this perfection is the key motif of my work.”

In this concert program, Pelēcis’ music will be surrounded and enriched by Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas, which match the Latvian composer’s musical style despite having been written four centuries earlier. Linda Leine explains this combination: “The five sonatas by Scarlatti that I will perform at the concert are like little pearls among Pelēcis’ vast prose of musical seasons. You can hear the harmony between Pelēcis’ polyphony, the clarity of his texture, his rhythm and lyricism, and Scarlatti’s sonatas. When I asked the composer himself what he thought of this combination, he was very supportive and revealed that Domenico Scarlatti was one of his favorite composers.” 

Linda Leine is a Latvian pianist of the younger generation who has always been attracted by a broader perspective, different streams and unexplored depths of music. After graduating from the Emīls Dārziņš Music School and studies at the Latvian Academy of Music, her skill was refined at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre, Lübeck Academy of Music, Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, and other schools. Her specialties are performing in a chamber ensemble in a piano duet (four hands and two pianos) as well as with vocals. Her latest collaboration is Trio Fabel with clarinetist Anna Gāgane and cellist Kristaps Bergs.

For a long period, Linda Leine played in a piano duet with Daria Marshinina. Global tours have brought the musicians to famous concert halls such as Konzerthaus Berlin and numerous festivals, including the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. In 2019, the duet released their album, Schubert.Stravinsky.Vasks, which was nominated for the prestigious OPUS KLASSIK award. András Schiff invited Leine & Marshinina to collaborate for the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg. In 2022, Linda Leine released her solo album Seasons, dedicated to Georgs Pelēcis’ cycle for piano.

2023 Spring Season events of Concert series PERSONALLY:

• 15/01 | SUNDAY | 3 p.m. LINDA LEINE. PELĒCIS UN SCARLATTI

• 05/02 | SUNDAY | 3 p.m. TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHAMBER MUSIC GOLD. HET COLLECTIEF

• 02/04 | SUNDAY | 3 p.m. RIGA SAXOPHONE QUARTET. SKETCHES OF THE WORLD

• 14/05 | SUNDAY | 3 p.m. TRIO ANGELICUS. JĀNIS LŪSĒNS. WORDS OF THE HEART