Rothko Chapel | Liepaja art forum

Members

Latvian Radio Choir

Conductor Kaspars Putniņš

Ineta Abakuka - viola

Sanita Glazenburga - celesta

Juris Žvikovs - piano

Juris Āzers - percussions

Guntars Freibergs - percussions

The Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, exhibiting the famous artist’s large-scale purple paintings, has become a non-denominational temple for daydreaming where each visitor can enjoy reverie, empowerment, and spiritual contemplation. The name is used by another impressive piece of art, American composer Morton Feldman’s composition, selected to be the central piece of the anniversary Festival.

The masterpiece will be performed in Liepaja for the first time, by the Latvian Radio Choir, featuring the finest Latvian instrumentalists, with conductor Kaspars Putniņš. ‘Feldman’s piece is an immersion into Rothko’s world, his vibrating, high-strung blocks of color and their juxtapositions. This music is a space for sensing the mental temperature of others and the rhythm of time itself. At the same time, it is a procession of images, forms, colors: an open form that started long before Rothko, Feldman, or any of us,’ Kaspars Putniņš describes the piece.

First, listeners will be lulled into a contemplative mood with works by several brilliant American composers. In Caroline Shaw’s choir piece 'And the Shallow’, we will hear motifs of Psalm 84, which speaks of the sense of longing for home. John Cage’s ‘Once Upon a Time’ will encourage reflection upon our relationship with the world through a rhythmical word play from Gertrude Stein’s children’s book. Steve Reich’s speech melody ‘Proverb’ reveals Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea from Culture and Value: 'How small a thought it takes to fill a life.’

We will also hear an emotional piece for percussions and ‘Die Lotosblume’ by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa. Hosokawa explains: ‘In Buddhism, Buddha is sitting on a lotus flower as a symbol of the transcendental. The lotus sinks its roots into the muddy ground, grows through the water and opens up to the sky. In the moonlight, the closed bud is reminiscent of the hands of a man engrossed in his prayers.’