Composers who change countries often fall between the cracks, their music never quite recognised as typical of one or the other, and with neither country willing to wholeheartedly champion them. Such a man was Latvian-born Tālivaldis Ķeniņš (1919–2008). Educated in France, he spent his creative life in Canada. Even a cursory listen to this excellent new recording on the Finnish label Ondine is enough to convince you that here is a first-class craftsman with a sufficiently individual voice to inspire further investigation.
A Neo-romantic at heart – and given his dates something of a musical conservative – Ķeniņš’ music carries faint echoes of Stravinsky or Bartók in its rhythmic spikiness and a tendency to eschew major or minor keys for...
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