Maskats,
Arturs (1957) 
Biography
Works
Foto 1
Arturs Maskats was born on December
20th, 1957 in Valmiera. He studied at the Jāzeps Mediņš Music
School, where among his teachers were Jānis Līcītis (harmony) and
Marija Mediņa (the musical form, instrumentation) – a
representative of a notable family of Latvian composers and the
spiritual motivator of Arturs Maskats’s further progress. He
finished the composition class with Valentīns Utkins (1982) at the
Latvian State Conservatory, and, during his years of study, he
received the top award at the All Nations Young Composer Festival
(1981) in Yerevan, Armenia.
The focus of the composer’s creative life is the theatre. As the
Music Director at the Rainis Dailes Theatre (1982–1997) he composed
original music for almost one hundred productions, among them the
distinguished Reawakening Period production Mūžības
skartie (Those Touched by Eternity) (1987) by Aleksandrs
Čaks, which poet Jānis Peters called that era’s purification.
Arturs Maskats composed for other theatres’ productions too. He was
the chairman of the executive board of the Latvian Composer’s Union
(1993–1996), and as of 1996 is the artistic director of the Latvian
National Opera.
Arturs Maskats has been awarded the Lielā mūzikas balva (Great
Music Award) in 1996, 2001, 2002 and 2011. His
work Tango was performed at the final of the 3rd
international symphonic composition
competition Masterprize in London (2003).
An intensive musical thinking and expressiveness of thought
characterize the works of Arturs Maskats. This also has required
choosing an appropriate form of expression. These musically created
impulses are not infrequently drawn from a particular sensitiveness
(Ojārs Vācietis) or in the lyrically noblesse word. Since his
youth, he has been captivated by French poetry and Latin culture
(Paul Verlaine, Michelangelo, Pier Paolo Pasolini). He also draws
from the world of dance. In his work Salve Regina,
notable in the musical text is the expressive sonic mildness of the
cello, the performance’s carriage at times behind the fingerboard.
At the same time the music is advisedly organized. The rhythm of
the gold section can be discerned in the compositional form of
his Concerto grosso. It will resolve in the
concerto’s intensified emotional space. One of the composer’s works
– Tango for symphony orchestra – seems to
vibrate on a hot pole. One is able to speak about a contemporary
romantic interpretation, especially in the dramaturgical aspect, in
the music of Arturs Maskats.
