Pianist Diāna Zandberga’s concert "Angel Bone"

The concert Angel Bone is a story about the search for light - about the strength that allows one to be fragile, and about invisible wings that carry us when we forget how to fly.

The first part of the concert traces a path from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s limpidly harmonious yet surprise-filled Sonata in F major, K.332 toward wonder and spiritual illumination in Franz Liszt’s legends “St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds” and “St. Francis of Paola Walking on the Waves,” and then to Richard Wagner’s “Liebestod” from Tristan and Isolde in Liszt’s piano transcription, where love reaches beyond the boundaries of human existence.

At the center of the second part will be works by this year’s jubilarians Imants Zemzaris and Pēteris Vasks, including the world premiere of Vasks’s latest piano piece, “Flaming Morning Music,” which feels strikingly timely now as a depiction of the horrors of war and a warning to stop.

In the choreomusical new works inspired by artistic research and created especially for Diāna Zandberga - Sabīne Ķezbere’s “Bright White” with choreography by Baiba Kokina and Linda Leimane’s “Angel Bone” with choreography by Raimonds Martinovs - the pianist will also become a dancer.

"At the base of every wing are bones. Behind the lightness of flight lies strength, behind gentleness - endurance, behind the visible - the invisible," this thought by Linda Leimane becomes the metaphor for the entire concert.

Diāna Zandberga is Vice-Rector for Scientific and Creative Work, Head of the Doctoral School, and Associate Professor in the Piano Department at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music.

For several decades, D. Zandberga has been actively performing in European countries, the USA, and Brazil, and has premiered dozens of piano works by various composers. She has recorded seven albums of piano music, including works by Latvian composers - Dace Aperāne’s Sounds and Echoes (Skani, 2015), Imants Zemzars’s piano music Another Traveler Fantasy (Skani, 2021), and Latvian Piano Landscapes (Skani, 2022).

"A pianist with fire in her fingers," wrote the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia about Diāna Zandberga.