{unpublished notes to the 2003 Nonesuch release}

No expression can ring true without incorporating its opposite -- to recognize the light, you must perceive the dark, and vice versa. The music of Latvian composer Peteris Vasks resonates with life's hopeful ideal as well as its often more tragic reality -- and, in this, his work not only has more immediate impact but more staying power than so many strictly black or white sounds. As the best music always does, Vasks' compositions reveal shades of gray, gradations of emotion bred from a resolute coalition of heart and mind.

Born on April 16, 1946, in the western Latvia river port town of Aizpute, Peteris Vasks was the son of a Baptist minister, whose home echoed with music. But his father's religious avocation wasn’t officially suitable under the Soviet yoke; so, after orchestral experience in the capital of Riga, young Peteris had to travel to Lithuania for advanced music tuition. Having played the violin early-on, he studied double-bass at the Lithuanian Academy of Music. The proximity to Poland brought him into contact with its postwar avant-garde -- in particular, the music of Lutoslawski, Penderecki and Gorécki, with its influential combination of highly refined technique and deep expressive power. After two years of Soviet military service, Vasks was able study composition at the Latvian State Conservatory and play in various native ensembles. By the late 1970s, he began his career as a freelance composer, retaining his idealism not only by avoiding Communist party membership but refusing any utilitarian hackwork. Vasks' music has since carried a message of conscience and aspiration.

As the case with precursors like Shostakovich and Schnittke, as well as his spiritual contemporaries Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli, Vasks' music drew sustenance from the singular intensity attached to music-making behind the Iron Curtain. "Under the Soviets, concerts perhaps meant more here," Vasks explains. "People listened very closely to the undercurrent of spiritual protest in the music. This unified the musicians and the audience. You wouldn't want the Iron Curtain back, of course. But in such an atmosphere, music is very important to people." Within a world of social subjection and personal hardship, Vasks developed an affirmative attitude in his art, one that he has conveyed on many occasions: "I go through pessimism finally to confirm at the end that I say, until my last breath, `Yes' to the beauty of the world."

The key compositions of Vasks' maturity -- the songful, affecting group of works for string orchestra, Musica Dolorosa, Cantabile and Symphony No. 1, "Voices"; concertos for cello and for cor anglais; Message for chamber orchestra; the seraphic Violin Concerto, "Distant Light"; Lauda and the dramatic Symphony No. 2 for full orchestra; choral works such as Dona nobis pacem; and three previous string quartets, among other chamber and solo pieces -- all speak to this artist's mission. His is a music often born of grief, both individual and collective; but through the lyrical balm of nature and the nurture of an ultimate faith in humanity, these works shine with an essential optimism, like a light that the hopeful can glimpse through the often frighteningly dark tunnel of life. Commissioned for and premiered by the Kronos Quartet, Vasks' String Quartet No. 4 sings a doleful song, one written while the composer's mother was on her deathbed. Yet anguish and anger give way to requiem, remembrance and, with hope, renewal. With grace, memories -- whether in a mother's treasured lullaby or a community's folk song -- can be salve for the soul, seed for the future.

For his fourth string quartet, composed in the last months of 1999, Vasks wrote the following note:

"While working on the score, I often reflected upon the passing century. My reflections were somber ones. There has been so much bloodshed and destruction, and yet love's power and idealism have helped to keep the world in balance. I wanted to speak of these things in my new quartet, not from the sidelines but with direct emotion and sensitivity. The quartet is composed of five movements. Movement I, Elegy: As with many of my other compositions, this one originates in silence, through which a motive from the Latvian folk song `Who were they who sang?' (`Kas tie tadi, kas dziedaja?') is gradually heard. The introductory passage was inspired by distant, half-forgotten memories, tinged occasionally by the painful realization of time's relentless passing. Strident chords introduce the second movement, Toccata I. My musical portrayal of this movement is in spirit close to that of Shostakovich's style; it is aggressive and, at times, ironic.

"The third movement, Chorale, follows without interruption. It is filled by spiritually intense and concentrated passages of extended singing, with its expressive nature remaining constant throughout dynamic and textural changes. This movement's culmination provides only a momentary respite from this searching, restless characteristic and that of the fourth movement, Toccata II, in which the musical material of the second movement returns. The `fugato' episode of the fourth movement introduces not only this particular movement's main culmination, but that of the whole quartet, as the violins, playing in octaves of the high register, intone motives from the Latvian folk song `Return, dear Sun to God' (`Ej saulite, driz pie Dieva'). (In moments of deepest feeling or doubt, I am able to find a certain consolation and strength in the roots of my native country.) The fifth movement, Meditation, is a subdued, endless song played by muted strings, created by two complementary musical renderings. The coda reiterates the folk song motive heard in the first movement, until the music vanishes into silence and infinity.

"I have dedicated Quartet No. 4 to my mother -- in love, gratitude and admiration."

The Kronos Quartet's initial experience with Peteris Vasks was rehearsing the composer's Third Quartet with him in Amsterdam in 1996. Kronos leader David Harrington remembers: "I've found that you often have to imagine real intensities of experience to address the full reality in a piece of music. And when we were rehearsing the Third Quartet with Peteris, he said something -- in reference to some of the loud playing in the piece -- that really struck us. He said that the dynamic should be played `like your city had just been bombed,' with that kind of shock and fear. This comment was so evocative and powerful that it became part of the fabric of our other interpretations, particularly with the Schnittke quartets, which we recorded later. Peteris' music definitely taps into something elemental, without the music being elementary. He draws from this language he has inherited, whether it's Latvian folk song or Shostakovich, and yet his music feels bold and distinctive because it is so personal."

After premiering the work on May 21, 2000, in Paris, Kronos played Vasks' Fourth Quartet scores of times in concert prior to recording the piece. It was one of these pre-session performances that impressed upon Harrington and his fellow members of Kronos the uncommon emotional capacity of this music, its great potential to move.

"The first concert Kronos played after Sept. 11 included Vasks' Fourth Quartet as its last piece," Harrington recalls. "And as one of the first concerts in the University of California-Berkeley Performing Arts season, it was the first concert after the tragedy for most of the people in the audience -- so there was a quality to the listening that was special. After the last note of the last movement, the Meditation, died away, there came the longest silence I've ever experienced at a concert. At the end, no one in the audience or the quartet moved. There was a suspension of time that everyone wanted to last; it was so comforting that it was like a gift. That night was one of my most treasured experiences in playing music, and I think Kronos has since tried to approach that sort of moment in everything we do -- certainly in our recording session for the Fourth. We recorded the piece with the memory of that event in mind, the memory of a rare moment when the music and the feeling the music elicits became the same thing."

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