Pēteris Vasks

Birdsong and silence recur through the music of Pēteris Vasks, and with them a plain anxiety about what is being done to the natural world. Born in Aizpute in 1946, he trained as a violinist in Latvia, studied double bass in Vilnius, and took composition with Valentīns Utkins; years of playing double bass in orchestras gave him the close knowledge of string sound on which his best-known works depend. The early scores are sharply modernist, built on violent contrast; the later ones move towards long melodic spans and a luminous stillness that never quite loses its tension. Cantabile, Musica dolorosa, the string quartets and the First Violin Concerto, Distant Light, written for Gidon Kremer, are the pieces most often played. He has gone on composing into his late seventies — a Second Violin Concerto and a Sixth String Quartet in 2020, and new scores since — and Latvia gave him its Grand Music Award for lifetime achievement in 2025. He graduated from the Latvian State Conservatory in 1978 and went on to teach composition, at the Emils Darzins Music School in Riga among other places. The Kronos Quartet and the Latvian Radio Choir are likewise closely associated with his music.