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Jun 28, 2010 - Concert at Riga Dom
This was our day to discover Riga, the capital of Latvia and the largest city in the Baltic countries. After a morning rehearsal, most of us went on a guided tour of the key sites of the city.
One of the highlights of this tour was the Art Noveau architecture, of which the accompanying photo gives a good example. (It was a block from our hotel.) The building is the creation of Mikhail Eisenstein, the prominent Russian architect of the late 19th and early 20th century and father of Soviet film director, Sergei Eisenstein.
Much of the tour took us through the extensive Old Town area of Riga, a place with great charm and beauty, offering interesting sites around every corner. Maybe it was the continuing good weather, but it seemed to many of us that Riga is yet another underrated tourist destination that should be much higher on everyone's list.
Late in the afternoon, we were bussed the relatively short distance to Riga Dom, more accurately The Cathedral of the Archbishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia.
This cathedral, in the heart of the Old Town, though not as ornate as other cathedrals in which we have sung, presented an acoustically live environment, which was both fun to experience and problematic for making our words understood. At one point in our pre-concert rehearsal, we cut off the final fortissimo chord of “All That Hath Life and Breath,” marvelling at the echo delay. Bruce said, “Forget about that. It will be going for 87 years.”
Although the concert seemed to have been well publicized, with notices in magazines and posters in strategic places,
our audience was small, with no more than about 150 people in a facility that could have accommodate thousands.
An interesting thing about this venue is that they require that half of any program consist of organ music. Fortunately, we happen to have an organ virtuoso in our midst, Peter Stoltzfus Berton. Peter opened the program, performing Mendelssohn's Sonata No. 1 in F-minor, op. 65. The other two pieces in his program were: O Gott, du frommer Gott, op. 65 (Sigfrid Karg-Elert) and Carillon de Westminster (Louis Vierne). Predictably, Peter's playing was brilliant, and it seemed that he must have used most of the 6718 pipes in this grand and historically significant organ.
After Peter's performance, the host choir, Frachori, gave an excellent performance of three pieces by Gallus, Tobial and Darzinš. As we did at Saturday night's concert, we began our performance by processing the length of the cathedral, singing “Sing dem Herrn.” This was followed by: Crucifixus, All That Hath Life and Breath, My Lord What a Mornin’, Ain’a That Good News, and Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.
We left as we had come in, to the applause of what seemed to be an appreciative crowd. Then we scattered in small groups to find dinner among the wide choice of inviting restaurants in Old Town. Hours later found most of us taking the pleasant 30-minute walk back to our hotel, with the daylight finally beginning to fade well after 10 p.m.