Latvian song and dance 2: the grand finale

Another quick post from the eye of the peaceful storm (now, on an official public holiday, the calm aftermath). The gathering of the 16,500 choral singers last night, to an audience of 70,000 in the grand pine-tree-surrounded stadium of Riga's forest park, was quite a sequel to the dizzying dances extravaganza of the previous evening (see previous post). Rich a cappella classics dating back as far, in some cases, as the first festival of 1873, led by a host of conductors including many women,

were interlaced, over a period of four and a half hours (no interval!), with poppier numbers that clearly had great emotional significance for all Latvians (lots of iPhone waving to this one).

Mixed feelings, then, but we did it! And proud that our young friends Artis and Kristaps participated for the first time, and loved it.

They went on singing until 4 in the morning. Post vivem in town shortly...

43,290 sing and dance in Riga

Just a quick post, with jaw still open, to show the grand finale of  the Latvian Dance Featival last night. Patriotism (as opposed to nationalism) can be a glorious thing. This is the only point at which there was no space to whirl after two and a half astonishing hours. 18,174 dancers from 739 dance groups from within Latvia and from the world diaspora, having rehearsed for the past five years, performing to an audience of a a mere 5,000. Over in the woodland stadium, 16,500 singers from 427 choirs were holding their dress rehearsal to an audience of 60,000 - another of that number are the lucky ticket holders for tonight (ourselves very honoured to be included - demand was ten times the supply, and tickets sold out within hours on the day of release). Our friends Kristaps and Artis will be participating. No wonder this is listed by UNESCO as a 'masterpiece of humanity'.

More in due course - too much to see and do right now.

Art Nouveau: a street in Riga

Alberta iela, where tourist groups are brought to see the most extensive row of Art Nouveau blocks in Latvia's capital, also happens to be where my friend Kristaps' small but classy publishing house, Mansards, has its office.

In, it has to be said, the weirdest and most forbidding, castle-like building on the street, No. 11,

the 1908 work of Eižens Laube which also has the advantage for students and renters of not having been done up yet.

A barrel-vaulted entrance

leads to a courtyard which would be very Crime and Punishment were it not for the lovely big tree in it. The old designs on the staircase to Kristaps' office have been nicely revealed, too.

And he gets to look out on such gems as this, No. 8, designed in 1903 by the predominant genius of the Art Nouveau movement in Riga, Mikhail Eisenstein (1867-1921), father of film-maker Sergey.

No. 4 (1904) is where young Sergey lived for a few years, my guidebook says, though I didn't see a plaque. Perhaps I was distracted by the lions on the turrets.

Fascinating details abound on both: at like the satyrs with pan-pipes here,

a more central lion atop No. 8

 and the Babylonian dragons here.

My own personal favourite, partly because of the handsome dark red stripes, is No. 2a, another Eisenstein folly from 1906.

with more fine classical heads

and a combination of grotesquerie and elegance lower down.

It's especially endearing because the young Isaiah Berlin spent some of his formative years here - this time there IS a plaque.

Turn left at the end of the street, and you find an especially spruce restoration, of No. 41 Strēlnieku iela, a typically riotous Eisensteinian fancy of 1905-6 which now houses the Stockholm School of Economics

with classical/futuristic helmets at the base

There's a statue outside, one of many dedicated to the city's much-loved fourth Mayor, Riga-born Englishman George Armitstead.

Most startling of all are Eisenstein's elongated heads on the corners of the pinnacle at No. 10b Elizabetes iela,

another opulent specimen.

The Art Nouveau district has most of them, but there are a few in the Old Town, one topped by this wolf,

though here as you'd expect what turns out to be the oldest inhabited house in Riga makes a tourist attraction with the two buildings to its left, known as the Three Brothers in counterpoint with Tallinn's more regular Three Sisters.

Kristaps' tour ended here - I've described and depicted the building where Wagner conducted in a previous post - and began with an interesting wander through the sensitively restored pedestrian streets of Bergs Bazaar (originally late 1800s) with their abundant cafes and restaurants, one of many fine pieces of discreet intervention by the architect Zaiga Gaile, whose work Kristaps understandably admires.

So much more of this ilk, and other districts to discover, when I return to Riga, which can't be too soon.

From Albertopolis to Riga

Two Sundays ago, I was basking in the focused glory of the Latvian Radio Choir singing Rachmaninov's All-Night Vigil (Vespers) at a late-night Prom (photo courtesy BBC/Mark Allan; the rest apart from the Vereshchagin painting are mine or taken on my camera in the case of the Imperial College shot).

On the following Tuesday morning, by pure serendipity, I happened to be in Riga, where my wonderful Latvian friend Kristaps took me to see St John's Church in the Old Town, knowing it was where the choir had recorded the Rachmaninov.

That Sunday before I could take off to Latvia and one of my favourite places in the world, Pärnu in Estonia, was quite a bit of work. First I had to prepare for and then speak at the afternoon Proms Extra event in the Imperial College Union just down from the Royal Albert Hall. Here I am, below, with one of Radio 3's very best presenters, Louise Fryer, and my New Best Friend (we hadn't met before), Royal College of Music doyenne and Taneyev expert Anastasia Belina, a very vivacious person. You can hear an edited version of the talk in the interval of the BBC Radio 3 broadcast of the main orchestral concert, with introductory chants from the LRC, for a while at any rate here - the Proms Extra slot starts at around 1:00:27. The choir's late-night performance of the Vespers is here.

Then I very willingly attended both Rachmaninov Proms and wrote about them on The Arts Desk - though the review had to be pieced together en route for Riga. The full Baltic experience of basking once again in the amazing performances of the Estonian Festival Orchestra players, both collectively and in chamber music, is covered here.

Kristaps packed such a lot in to the three hours we had in Riga before taking the coach to Pärnu at lunchtime that I can't cover it all here - another post will be necessary for the famous street of Art Nouveau buildings where the small publishing house for which he works is based. But I think we can justify two religious edifices and two places with a connection to a very famous composer. Our first interior was that of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Nativity, built between 1876 and 1883 at Alexander II's behest, two of its golden domes glittering through the trees here on a hot summer morning.

It became a Lutheran church during the German occupation of World War 1, and later a planetarium under the Soviets. Its lavish restoration was completed in 2000.

The faithful line up to kiss their favourite icons

and under this fresco of the Nativity,

painted by Vasily Vershchagin. There are two 19th century Russian artists of that name, and I hope it's the more significant one, if only for the stark contrast of his most famous image painted on the eastern battlefield.

I got quite 'bolshie' when ferociously asked by a headscarved lady not to photograph (I did so without flash, and saw no prohibitive signs): this is as close as I could get to a Pussy Riot act against the wretched Russian Orthodox Church of today, Putin's poodle and hijacked by a vicious leader.

Of course it's all impressive, but much more to my taste was the modest and more ancient artistry of St John's, founded by Dominicans in 1200 and taken over by the Lutherans in 1587.

Rebuilt several times, extensively so after a major fire in 1677, it retains its beautiful Gothic ceiling, the finest in Latvia.

Kristaps knew of my Wagner passion so he managed to get us into an apartment block on Brīvības iela which stands on the site of the young(er) composer's dwelling between 1838 and '39. Here he wrote Rienzi, which I have the dubious pleasure of declaring I've now witnessed live, or about half of it. The stained glass window dates from 1913

and there's a plaque plus a portrait in an alcove, too.

The present building is impressive, in any case, with its fine staircase.

Pushing it a bit for time before the coach (which we caught, eventually, but not at the coach station), K kindly detoured down Richard Wagner Street - all names undergo rigorous Latvian reworking -

to see the concert hall he frequented when it was an opera house, with its appropriate dragons. During his time in Riga, he staged five different operas and conducted another 20. In orchestral concerts he focused - no surprise - on Beethoven. There's more useful information on Wagner in Riga here.

The hall/theatre subsequently played host to other very distinguished figures (I leave you to make them out).

And so, speedily, back through the green belt and via the Opera House, to a scramble for the coach, which concerned my laid-back friends and taxi driver far less than it did me. But I'm a great admirer of the brinksmanship which wants to show the visitor as much as possible: I do it myself, much to certain folks' consternation.