Georgs Pelēcis HOMAGE TO SCARLATTI. 24 CAPRICES (2022) - Reinis Zarins plays Klavins Una Corda

Reinis Zariņš live in concert in Klavins piano factory concert hall, Kuldīga, Latvia, on 30 September 2023. A man with kind eyes behind thick glasses, Georgs Pelēcis composed this homage to Domenico Scarlatti in a short span of time during his 75th birthday year in 2022. He has shared that the three Italian grands, Monteverdi, Vivaldi and D. Scarlatti, have been a great source of enjoyment throughout his life. Of Domenico Scarlatti, he singles out Scarlatti’s particular temperamental approach to playing the keyboard, the tangible excitement woven into his faster works, an approach that reminds us of how we might become heated while playing some sports or even table game. The way we say that making music is “playing“, is absolutely justified through the ever-new playfulness we find in Scarlatti’s keyboard works. These are mainly the 555 sonatas Scarlatti penned through his life, and Pelēcis has listened to them all, several times, and has patiently reduced his favourites list, down to two dozen or so. Years and maybe decades passed without any tangible expression of homage, until 2022, when an opportunity arose for Reinis Zariņš to give a full solo piano recital of Pelēcis’ music. And now we have this new set of beautiful miniatures: a few are pretty Scarlatti-ish in their style, but the rest honour Scarlatti’s playful spirit in a truly Pelēcian language. Among the set, Pelēcis includes 4 arrangements of Latvian folksongs -- not least because his Italian heros gladly turned to folk materials. The Latvian folksongs are Nos. 4 (night-watch reflections), 10 (song of an orphan), 18 (mourning for a lost sibling), 24 (farewell to midsummer night). The 24 caprices are ordered in the circle of fifths, in all 24 keys. Reinis Zariņš premiered Homage to Scarlatti in late 2022 in Riga on a conventional concert grand piano. The performance in this video, however, is quite unusual because of the unique instrument Reinis is using. This instrument, Klavins Concert Una Corda, was created by the Latvian piano maker Dāvids Kļaviņš specifically with Bach’s keyboard music in mind -- it has only a single string for each key, and so the sound is completely different from what we are used to hearing in our concert halls. It has elements of fortepiano and harpsichord in its nature, and it is possible to change its sound considerably by changing the type of felt that lies in between the strings and hammers. This is exactly what Reinis Zariņš experiments with in this concert -- he plays the first six and the last six caprices with a thicker layer of felt, while the middle 12 caprices are heard with a transparent, extremely thin layer of fabric. In the concert hall environment, it was not easy to decide which type of felt is best, because of acoustic peculiarities; however, in a recording like this, Reinis finds that he prefers the thicker felt. Write your preference in the comments. #georgspelecis #reiniszarins #scarlatti 0:00 C major 3:21 a minor 6:00 G major 8:17 e minor (Latvian folksong “Tumša nakte, zaļa zāle“) 13:31 D major 16:12 b minor 20:27 A major 22:29 f# minor 27:02 E major 29:00 c# minor (Latvian folksong “Maza biju, neredzēju“) 32:23 B major 34:57 g# minor 38:34 F# major 41:50 eflat minor 44:53 Dflat major 47:53 bflat minor 52:04 Aflat minor 56:40 f minor (Latvian folksong “Kam, liepiņa, tu nolūzi?“) 1:01:35 Eflat major 1:05:12 c minor 1:07:31 Bflat major 1:10:53 g minor 1:13:24 F major 1:15:27 d minor (Latvian folksong “Labvakari, Jāņa māte“)