Composer Imants Zemzaris: Music Needs Meaningful Substance
Latvian composer Imants Zemzaris, who turned 75 this year, talks in an interview about his career, writing by hand and his research into Jānis Ivanovs. A solo piano concert of his works takes place in Riga on 10 October.
Latvian composer and music teacher Imants Zemzaris celebrated his 75th birthday on 14 April this year. In an interview with the newspaper Diena, he discusses his creative path, his work at school and his views on what music should contain. As part of the anniversary events, pianist Reinis Zariņš will give a solo concert of the composer's piano works on 10 October at the Imanta Culture Centre in Riga.
The concert and anniversary events
In spring, the anniversary was marked by the concert series Bach and the Jubilarians, in which organists Aigars Reinis, Ligita Sneibe and Vita Kalnciema performed works by Bach alongside organ music by Zemzaris, Pēteris Vasks and Aivars Kalējs. The October programme will include Zemzaris's most significant piano pieces and two recently written compositions, Two Sketches, created this year. The composer says the programme was chosen by the pianist himself.
Life without a computer or phone
Zemzaris has no mobile phone, does not use a computer and is not on social media. He writes his compositions in pencil on manuscript paper, finding computer notation cold and impersonal. When needed, he has a score entered into a computer so that orchestral parts can be printed. He has taught composition for 51 years at the Emīls Dārziņš Music Secondary School, where he was once a student himself. Earlier he combined teaching with editorial work at the newspaper Literatūra un Māksla.
Jānis Ivanovs and meaningful substance
Zemzaris has recently been publishing articles in the journal Mūzikas Saule about composer Jānis Ivanovs (1906–1983). He has drawn on unpublished materials of musicologist Vizbulīte Bērziņa held in the State Archive. As Zemzaris stresses, Soviet-era ideology restricted the search for new musical language.
His own main criterion in music is meaningful substance, a phrase he links to Ivanovs. He was once drawn to novelty and surprise, but content matters more to him now. As a model he names Pēteris Vasks, who turned to spiritual music and to the suppressed chapters of Latvian history.
