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Dr. Kris Rizzotto, organ
Recorded live in concert at Gothic Hall at the University of Oklahoma (USA).
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Per aspera ad astra - Aivars Kalējs (b. 1951)
Aivars Kalējs is one of the most important Latvian musicians of his generation. He studied composition and organ at the Latvian Conservatoire in Riga (1969 - 1977) under Ādolfs Skulte and Nikolajs Vanadziņš respectively. Having performed in almost all the European countries, Japan, U.S. and Canada, he is internationally known as a recitalist, composer, and a musicologist with published articles about organ history.
Kalējs worked on the monument board of the Latvian Ministry of Culture between 1980 and 1985. He focused on the history and preservation of the organs in Latvia and was able to add 250 organs to the country’s index of protected cultural monuments. He has been the organist at the Dome Cathedral in Riga for almost forty years. Kalējs also holds the position of organist at the New Church of St. Gertrude. He has written pieces for orchestra and for various instruments, but his organ works occupy the central place among his compositions.
Right before Christmas in 1989, when Latvia was claiming its rightful independence from Soviet occupation, Kalējs finished writing Per aspera ad astra, which has become known as one of his most colorful and impressive organ works. In the composer’s words, this piece is “dedicated to the memory of the children of Latvia who died during the Soviet deportations.”
The Soviet mass deportation from the Baltic states in 1949 sent about 94,000 Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians to inhospitable regions of Siberia. Latvians were almost 50% of the group, and 72% of the people deported were women or children under the age of sixteen. This operation aimed to forcefully collectivise rural households, and to eliminate all support to those who were against the communist occupation. The prisoners were sent to the death camps “forever,” with no passports, only identification cards. Because the Soviet authorities failed to provide housing and clothing, and conditions of forced work were so hard, the death rate among deportees was very high. The Soviet deportations are considered an act of genocide. According to Heinrichs Strods, “Soviet prison camps could also be called death camps. Unlike the Nazi camps where people were killed systematically, the Soviet camps took their prisoners to slow painful death by imposing hard work and life conditions. Mostly the male prisoners died, families lost their fathers. A large number of children spent their childhoods in Siberia.”
Per aspera ad astra (from Latin, “through hardships to the stars”) is a programmatic and very powerful piece. It depicts the story of exile with a growing sense of despair through mostly downward motions and descending figures that culminates on an apotheotic stretto that shifts the direction of the phrases and melodies upwards, towards the stars in heaven. The dream of lost childhood fades into birdsong on a lonely 1’ flute in ppp.
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Having performed extensively in North America, Europe and South America, Latvian Brazilian Cristiano Rizzotto is an active recitalist who frequently performs the works of contemporary composers. He actively promotes and supports the ongoing development of new music for the organ. He became a published composer after his Toccata was released by Wayne Leupold Editions in 2014.
Cristiano’s current goals are to continue to develop his skills as a church and concert musician in the United States; to use the knowledge obtained to cooperate with the resurrection and development of the organ culture in Brazil; to represent and bring awareness to Latvia and Brazil through his work abroad; to establish a stronger dialogue between the organ sceneries and professional organists of Brazil and the United States of America; and contribute to the American musical and liturgical scenery.
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The Latvian Brazilian organist Cristiano Rizzotto Vidal Pessôa is currently a doctoral student of Dr. John Schwandt and Dr. Damin Spritzer at the University of Oklahoma (OU - DMA: Doctor of Musical Arts). He also holds a Master's degree in Sacred Music from East Carolina University (ECU), where he studied with Mr. Andrew Scanlon, and a Bachelor's degree in Piano Performance from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he studied with Dr. Miriam Grosman.
Cristiano Rizzotto is the Director of Music and Organist at the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Duncan, OK.
Cristiano Rizzotto (26) worked as the organist at the Benedictine Abbey of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, until July 2011.
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