Romance Op. 15

Considering how important he was not only in Latvian but also in Russian musical history, it is surprising how little we hear of him in this country. Born in Latvia, he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory with Rimsky-Korsakov and went on to become a teacher there himself, numbering Prokofiev and Myaskovsky among his pupils. Having written the first Latvian symphony, the first Latvian string quartet and the first Latvian piano sonata while he was still in Russia, after the Revolution he returned to Riga where he became director of Latvian Opera and established the Latvian State Conservatory.

In spite of the fact that it was written during Vitols’s Russian period and was published    (under the name Wihtol) by Belayev in Leipzig in 1894, the Romance for violin and piano “sounds”, according to Baiba Skride, “very Latvian – the beautiful simplicity, singing melodies and a tender sort of sadness which is very characteristic of a lot of Latvian music.” It is in straightforward ternary form, the D minor outer sections based on just one expressive melody which is foreshadowed in the piano introduction and definitively introduced on the first entry of the violin. While the opening Andantino is far from unemotional as it proceeds by way of an acceleration and a crescendo to a climax taking the violin high up the E-string, it is in the energico middle section, which elevates the violin to even greater heights that the passion breaks out in earnest. Comparative calm is restored with the return of the opening section and absolute calm with the tranquillo ending, the violin poised its highest D as the sound gradually dies out.