In this album SKANI label celebrates the 70th birthday of Latvian composer Imants Zemzaris and releases world premiere recordings of his piano works. The album was recorded during the 2020 and is performed by Latvian pianist Diana Zandberga.

The dates of composition for the program range back from 1975 to 2019. Only one of the older works – Agri no rīta – has been previously recorded for Melodia label on LP in the 1980ies, this is the first time they are available to the wider audience.

Imants Zemzaris brightly presented himself in Latvian music in the 1970s as a representative of postmodernism, striving for consonant harmony and a sense of neo-romantic beauty, as well as uniting semantically diverse subtexts and associations.

The polystylistic freedom and sophisticated genres of the composer’s works combine seemingly contradictory features – neoclassicism, minimalism, elements of instrumental theatre, rock and disco, allusions and quotes from the works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and other grandmasters. Imants Zemzaris is often inspired by literature, painting and theater.

This is revealed in the poetic epigraphs and programmatic titles of the compositions. Thus, the rich and diverse language of music, with its spontaneity and plenitude of well-known intonations, is able to address a wide international audience.