There are many starry destinations for the classical music traveller in the summer months: established festivals at Salzburg, Lucerne, Aix-en-Provence and Bregenz among them. But turn your eyes – and ears – eastwards and you may be surprised by the quality of music-making that takes place at the Riga Jurmala Music Festival. Based around four weekends in July and August, one in the Latvian capital city, the others in the country’s flagship seaside resort, the festival features four great international orchestras as central pillars.
But it’s a leading Latvian who opens the first weekend. Mariss Jansons was born in Riga, son of the great Latvian conductor, Arvīds Jansons. In an interview last year, Jansons recalled being taken to Riga’s opera house as a child, constantly surrounded by music. Not surprisingly, he followed in his father’s footsteps and has long been widely regarded as one of the world’s finest conductors. In Riga, he brings his Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, of which he has been chief conductor since 2003, to play two concerts in the Latvian National Opera. The BRSO was founded by Eugen Jochum in 1949 and is renowned for its excellent quality, particularly its mahogany strings and muscular brass. Both qualities should be to the fore in Sibelius’ First Symphony, with its Russian darkness far removed from the icier orchestration of his later symphonies. Julian Rachlin is the soloist in Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto no. 2 in G minor, with its haunting middle movement, while in the Bavarians’ second concert, Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder plays Brahms’ autumnal Second Piano Concerto before the orchestra plays Beethoven’s Symphony no. 2.
The highlight of the second weekend – where the action moves to Jurmala – is the visit of the superb Russian National Orchestra, formed in 1990 by Mikhail Pletnev, the great pianist and conductor who remains the orchestra’s artistic director. Pletnev has a lengthy association with Prokofiev’s ballet scores and offers his own suite of extracts from Romeo and Juliet, with its soaring string melodies and the imposing brass. Another Russian legend appears in the first half of the concert: Mischa Maisky is the soloist in Saint-Saëns’ First Cello Concerto, a gloriously melodic work that Maisky has long championed.
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra are the star orchestra of the third weekend, bringing Rachmaninov and Berlioz to Jurmala’s Dzintari Concert Hall. If Pletnev’s relationship with the RNO is lengthy, Mehta’s with the IPO is decades older; he was appointed its Music Director for Life in 1981 – a post he relinquishes in December – but was its music adviser as long back as 1969. Yuja Wang, one of today’s keyboard superstars, is the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto – a monster of a work, renowned for its technical difficulties. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Hector Berlioz, so the IPO’s programme concludes with his hallucinatory Symphonie fantastique.