Diana Zandberga's solo album Landscapes of Latvian Piano Music includes piano works by 13 Latvian composers. they were recorded between 2011 and 2021 and the majority of the works are world premiere recordings.
The album opens with the still unpublished, romantically affected Three Introductions to the Rainis Poem AVE SOL (1960) by Janis Medins, whose manuscript was brought from 1989 to Latvia by the pianist Ventis Zilberts. Characters created by the Latvian playwright Rudolfs Blaumanis inspire the Imants Zemzaris' miniature The Year of Blaumanis (1988). Impressions of Spanish culture are revealed in works composed as part of the Embassy of Spain's Dreams of Spain project from 2011 Selga Mence's Impressions of Salvador Dal, Andris Dzenitis' Dorada, Anitra Tumsevica's Cancion de Diana. Encaje Espanol, and Andris Vecumnieks' Quasi Carmen. Additionally, the creation and recording of Gundega Smite's Hungarian Pianoscapes was supported by the Embassy of Hungary. The commissioned new works for the VI and VII Jazeps Vitols International Piano Competition are notable for their impressionistic colours Eriks Esenvalds' Frozen Horizon (2013) and Janis Zandbergs' Volatile Watercolor (2017). A refined sound also characterises the newest Latvian piano music, including Pauls Dambis' Bells of the Wind, Dace Aperane's Water Patterns, and Marite Dombrovska's Impressions for Piano and Electronics, all composed in 2018.
The album concludes with two Peteris Vasks' miniatures Music for a Summer Evening and Latvian Dance, which, with their lyrical expression and allusions to Latvian folk songs, call back to the vivid miniatures of Jazeps Medi 326;s at the beginning of the CD. This album reveals not just the characteristic paradigms of Romanticism and the bitter and sad longings for the unobtainable in Latvian piano music, as in, for example, the works by Dace Aperane, Selga Mence, and Eriks Esenvalds, but also the varied approaches toward the instrument and searches for new sounds, using sonoric approaches: the vibrating iron bars placed on the strings in Gundega Smite's Hungarian Pianoscape No. 2 or the electronic effects in Marite Dombrovska's Impressions. Conversely, Andris Vecumnieks' clever paraphrase Quasi Carmen is notable for its humour and vivid virtuosity.
