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Latvian Radio Choir will perform at the 3rd International Music Festival of Central-Eastern Europe Eufonie

The Latvian Radio Choir brings its programme of modern classics and Austrian romantic masters to Warsaw. Alongside Anders Hillborg’s fascinating early 1980s score muo:aa:yiy::oum that has already become a minimalism classic; written around the same time, the choir will perform Tomtit’s Message - a Pēteris Vasks’ piece with Uldis Bērziņš verses. The Latvian sonic landscape will also be represented by the choral master Ēriks Ešenvalds with his 2011 composition Stars that uses Sara Teasdale’s poem for its lyrics, and the emotionally staggering opus A Drop in the Ocean. This 2006 piece uses the verses of the Prayer for Peace of St Francis of Assisi and a quote from Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Deeply rooted in faith is also the Polish master Henryk Górecki’s hymn for the Virgin Mary Totus Tuus, written in honor of the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland in 1987. Praise to the Madonna can also be heard in the Austrian romantic Anton Bruckner’s early masterpiece Ave Maria, while the fellow Austrian Gustav Mahler will be added to the programme with his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) with the composer’s own verses, as well as the choral arrangement of the anguish-filled Adagietto from his symphony No. 5.