Anna Heller plays “Music for a Summer Evening ” by Peteris Vasks. Peteris Vasks has a special role within the scene of Baltic composers. He is not simply the most important and popular composer Latvia has ever had. He always speaks to his listeners with an intensity that is fervent and heralds of something higher. This higher is undoubtedly what is above the human world and at the same time is inherent in man: the divine nature. The composer says: ‘I am very deeply rooted in nature. In the Nordic nature. Her influence permeates all of my music. Our nature is very versatile, we have four distinct seasons. The winter is very long, the summer very short and all the more longed for and beautiful. The transition periods are very dramatic.’ As a kind of ‘encore’ for a performance of the Seasons cycle, Vasks wrote Vasara’s vakara muzika – summer evening music. It is based on older sketches and is firmly anchored in tradition with its fixed metric structure. The composer says of this piece: ‘It describes a still summer evening. The sun sets. Slowness. Memories of experiences rise. There is an increase in their volume. Towards the end you can hear in the style of a folk song: ‘We have survived the time of tyranny and are still one identity’. The end is silence, everything is asleep.’ (Christoph Schlüren) Thank you to @SchottM for providing the scores.