Andrejs Jurjāns: Concerto Elegiaco in E minor for Cello and Orchestra

Andrejs Jurjāns (1856-1922)

Concerto Elegiaco in E minor for Cello and Orchestra

I. Maestoso - Allegro agitato 0:00
II. Andante 7:53
III. Allegro agitato (Tempo I) 13:00

Maris Villeruss, cello
Latvian TV & Radio Symphony Orchestra
Leonids Vigners, conductor

Andrejs Jurjāns (1856 -1922) was a Latvian composer and musicologist. He was Latvia's first classical composer, having composed instrumental pieces and cantatas. Jurjāns also studied and collected more than 6000 pieces of Latvian folklore, among them 3000 songs, which he compiled in six books, called Latvju tautas mūzikas materiāli (Materials of Latvian Folk Music). Andrejs Jurjāns was born in 1856 in Ērgļi. Active in music from a young age, Jurjāns decided to beacome a musician after participating as a choir singer in the First Latvian Song Festival in 1873. In 1875, he studied music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, attending composition, organ and French horn classes with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and German organists Louis Homilius and Friedrich Homilius. In 1877, he published his first composition. From 1882 to 1916 Jurjāns taught music in the Russian Imperial Music Society Conservatory in Kharkiv, Ukraine. At the same time, he took an active part in Latvian musical life as a collector, researcher and arranger of national folk songs. His five-volume work, "Materials of the Latvian Folk Music" encompasses about 2,000 tunes. Jurjāns laid the foundation for further research in this area. Together with his brothers and musicians Juris, Pāvuls and Pēteris he regularly took part in the Latvian Song Festival as the Jurjāns' French horn quartet. Around 1910 Jurjāns' hearing became weaker and in 1916 he retired from his teaching career. Seriously ill, in 1920 he returned to Latvia, where he died in 1922.