The State Choir LATVIJA and Artistic Director Māris Sirmais invite audiences during the second half of August and the start of September to the 27th International Sacred Music Festival, the most extensive Latvian sacred music event of the year.
The concert will celebrate the 200th birthday of Austrian composer Anton Bruckner. The State Choir LATVIJA will join the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, soloists Lina Dabrauskaite (soprano, Lithuania), Emilia Rukavina (mezzo-soprano, Croatia), Bernhard Berchtold (tenor, Austria) and Daeho Kim (bassbaritone, Republic Korea), and conductor Māris Sirmais to perform the composer’s monumental, life-affirming Mass No. 3 in F minor. Johannes Brahms, who was already world renowned at that point, helped this piece to achieve its peak of fame and recognition with his enthusiastic raptures. The concert — and thus the Festival as a whole — will be capped off by Psalm 150, composed at the end of Bruckner’s life. Psalm 150 was the composer’s last sacred piece, which he described as his “best festive cantata of all.”