Musical Destinations
The new Riga-jurmala Music Festival hopes to put Latvia on the map as a destination for world-class orchestras, discovers Rebecca Franks
Rebecca Franks heads to the Latvian capital, Riga
Riga on a summer’s evening. Smartly dressed concertgoers flock to the National Opera House, which crowns gardens in the heart of the Latvian capital. After a glass of champagne on the terrace, they head inside. The stage is framed by a golden proscenium arch and an abundance of greenery and white blooms. If this fairytale theatre embodies tradition, then its latest floral decor is a breath of fresh air.
Crammed onto the platform is the world-famous Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (BRSO), conducted by Susanna
Mälkki. They are giving the inaugural concert of the Riga-jurmala Music Festival, and, as if to underscore that it’s a story of new beginnings, they perform a first symphony, Sibelius’s. Prokofiev and Strauss are also on the programme. There are, naturally, enormous bouquets.
It’s an impressive start for any new festival, let alone one that came together in a matter of months. The Riga-jurmala Music Festival, however, is nothing if not ambitious. Not a surprise, perhaps, given that its artistic director is Martin Engstroem, who is also behind Switzerland’s Verbier Festival. The idea is simple enough – four orchestras, four successive weekends – and the line-up is starry. In 2019, the Russian National, Israel Philharmonic and London Symphony orchestras were showcased, alongside the BRSO, while conductors included Gianandrea Noseda, Mikhail Pletnev and Zubin Mehta.
There is a twist. The Riga-jurmala
Music Festival is located, as its name suggests, in two places. It starts in the capital, and then it’s off to the Baltic coast. Jurmala, which means ‘seaside’, is a resort to the west of Riga, an easy 30 minutes on an old-style Soviet train. There, a beach of white quartz sand stretches a good 21 miles. Timber buildings nestle between pine trees. Once a favourite spa destination of Russian aristocracy and Soviet officials, it’s popular today with visitors enjoying the sunshine, sand and shallow sea.
The splendours of nature and the glories of music are never far away in Latvia. Over half of its land is covered in forest, and there are thousands of lakes and rivers. ‘Latvians are big nature lovers,’ explains Zane ulkstena, CEO of the festival. ‘Over the summer, at the weekends everyone goes to the woods or the sea.’ Even the Jurmala concert hall embraces the outdoors. Like a miniature Tanglewood in Boston or Garsington Opera in Oxfordshire, the Dzintari Concert Hall seats 2,000 in an open-air venue, with a wooden roof and open sides.
This summer, wanderlust explains why Riga is so serene at the weekend – even though it’s home to a third of the country’s population of 1.9 million. Strolling around the Old Town one afternoon, it’s easy to forget that this is the capital. It exudes a friendly charm, only added to by the numerous, top-quality buskers: a pianist under an archway, two teenage cellists duetting in front of the town hall. The festival’s tagline ‘Music is in our nature’ may be slick branding, but it certainly seems to be true, and statistics back it up. With 120 state-funded music schools, nearly one in 12 Latvians has a specialist music education. Latvian performers grace stages around the world: think soprano Kristine Opolais, violinist Gidon Kremer – and the much-missed conductor Mariss Jansons, who died last year.
Orchestras take the limelight at this festival, but there are recitals too, many of which take place in Riga’s historic
Great Guild. There’s an appetite to push the artistic limits further. ‘I want to do world premieres, I want something interdisciplinary,’ says ulkstena, who also runs a contemporary art gallery. She has a point. Pianist Lukas Geniu as includes a spot of intriguing Desyatnikov in his intriguing afternoon recital, and across the rest of the festival, there’s barely a note written after 1950.
But there’s a bigger hurdle to overcome: there’s no decent symphonic hall in Riga. ‘It was 20 years ago that I first heard discussion about us needing a concert hall,’ reflects Inga Vasiljeva, an expert on Latvia’s musical history. ‘Now we have a real chance to start building one.’ While the opera house has been a major cultural centre since the 1860s, the acoustic isn’t ideal for orchestras. ‘It’s an ongoing struggle,’ admits ulkstena. ‘We hope that the festival will be one more major signal.’
With a culture minister, Nauris Puntulis, who used to be a professional operatic tenor and a pop star, there may now be the political will to make it happen. A need, too, to consolidate Latvia’s place on the global stage. Since joining the EU in 2004, a fifth of Latvians have left to work elsewhere. ‘We feel like a European country now, and a lot of young people don’t understand Russian. They know English perfectly. German, too,’ explains Vasiljeva. Yet music has remained at the heart of Latvian identity, however else it has changed. ‘Violinist Gidon Kremer, cellist Misha Maisky, conductor Andris Nelsons: they are national heroes,’ she says. ‘We are a small nation and we need something to be proud of.’
Further information:
The Riga-jurmala Music Festival takes place from 10 July-30 August 2020 https://riga-jurmala.com
Latvia’s culture minister, Nauris Puntulis, used to be a professional tenor