Among the most notable regional sources of soulful and spellbinding new music have been the Baltic nations – once part of the Soviet Union – with Arvo Pärt (Estonia), Peteris Vasks (Latvia) and Balys Dvarionas (Lithuania) among the region’s most prominent composers. Works for violin and piano by all three of these Baltic voices – as well as by Giya Kancheli (from Georgia, another former Soviet republic) – are featured in this hypnotically beautiful album that celebrates, in part, the composers’ new-found freedom from a repressive Soviet regime.

Distinguished South African violinist Piet Koornhof – one of Delos’s most prolific recording artists – is partnered here by the renowned American pianist Thomas Hecht in a program largely characterized (as Koornhof puts it) by “stillness and closeness to the heart,” as well as “strong meditative and spiritual overtones.”

Track Listing

    Balys Dvarionas

  1. Pezzo elegiaco (1946) (5:35)
  2. Scherzino (1960) (3:30)
  3. Elegia canzonetta (1960) (4:14)
  4. Adagio (1971) (3:06)
  5. Impromptu (1969) (4:06)
  6. Meditation (1960) (2:43)

    7. Giya Kancheli

  7. Time…and again (22:17)

    8. Peteris Vasks

  8. Music for a Summer Evening (6:13)

    9. Arvo Pärt

  9. Fratres