Every year, the programme of Cello Cēsis Festival features a concert that takes by surprise with its unusual combinations of musical instruments. Our listeners have already had an opportunity to listen to concert programmes for cello and saxophone quartet or for cello and vibraphone. This year, we will be able to enjoy the voice of cello in conversation with a variety of percussion instruments. Performing with the outstanding Latvian cello player Ēriks Kiršfelds, amazing us with his brilliant appearances every year, will be the Perpetuum Ritmico ensemble of percussionists ‒ quite well known on their own right these days.

Just like the opening concert, this programme will also feature brilliant musical pieces written in our time. We will feel the breath of the world in the Snow in June elegy for cello and percussion by the unique Chinese composer Tan Dun, in Third Construction, a piece for percussion by the American avant-garde composer John Cage, and in Concerto Rotondo for cello solo by the ‘crazy’ Italian cello player and composer Giovanni Sollima, often referred to as the rock star of classical music.
We are also going to hear works by Latvian composers Ēriks Ešenvalds, Kristaps Pētersons and Linda Leimane. We are proud of the fact that each edition of Cello Cēsis presents a new musical piece. This year’s festival will see Anitra Tumševica’s Secret of the Old Mountain performed for the first time.

Ēriks KIRŠFELDS, cello

PERPETUUM RITMICO percussion ensemble