The youth choir Kamēr…, which with visionary conductor Māris Sirmais at the helm is almost consistently considered the best amateur choir in Latvia, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2010. In addition to a sold-out performance at the Latvian National Opera, the choir released the compact disc Mīlas madrigāli, a collection of choir songs that in some manner are all related to the theme of love.

The album contains a broad range of styles, as well as works by both Latvian and international composers. Songs are also in many different languages: Latvian, French, English, German and Italian. The compositions also traverse the years—from the baroque of Claudio Monteverdi to today’s young Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds.

Though the title of the CD references madrigals, not all of the compositions on the record could be classified in the classic definition of “madrigal.” Perhaps the title simply alludes to the fact that songs of love appear in many different forms.

Mīlas madrigāli features a trio of songs by Latvian composer Zigmārs Liepiņš, each of which is based on a folk song of another nation. They include “Es palikšu pie tevis,” based on a German folk song; “Lai tevi salasītu,” a Greek folk song; and “Padre Frančesko,” which has its origins in an Italian folksong. “Padre Frančesko” isn’t much of a song actually; it has more of a spoken quality about it, particularly the male voices. The song tells the tale of Father Francesco, who, for reasons known only to himself, tells an old woman to leave him alone, but a young maiden is warmly welcomed.

A song that actually is in the style of a madrigal is Marģeris Zariņš’s “Četrbalsīgs madrigāls par vecmodīgu tēmu.” Although it is a modern composition, the song is very much in the lyrical and musical style of an English madrigal from a previous century. Granted, I am by no means a musical scholar, but are traditional madrigals sung at such a rapid pace as this song? Certainly it shows the pure technical ability and talent of the choir members, but the breakneck pace doesn’t really fit what is meant to be a breezy, lilting English-style madrigal.

The two true treasures on this album—perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not—both involve composer Ešenvalds. “Mazā bilžu rāmīti” is a song arranged by Ešenvalds, but with music originally written by Renārs Kaupērs (of the popular Latvian group Prāta Vētra), and lyrics by beloved poet Imants Ziedonis. Kaupers also provides guest vocals on the song. The album closes with Ešenvalds’s “Tāls ceļš,” which for me is the highlight of the album. The romantic lyrics by Paulīna Bārda are provided equally romantic music by Ešenvalds, to make for one of the more engaging songs on the album.

However, one thing that strikes me about these performances is that they are perhaps a bit too perfect. The singers in Kamēr… are, to my knowledge, near professionals (some in Latvia would even be up for debating the choir’s “amateur” status), and certainly the recordings are precise and technically outstanding. Listening to the album, at some points I get the sense that it could use just a bit more emotion, since it seems to me that there is even a bit of restraint from the choir. Technical precision serves the choir well with the World Sun Songs collection and my favourite Kamēr… CD, Veltījumi, which is a collection of the choir’s interpretations of contemporary choir works by Latvian composers. At times it seems like there is something missing. I guess I was more expecting a CD that could be played during a candlelit dinner, or some similar romantic occasion. Mīlas madrigāli is not quite that.

Overall Mīlas madrigāli is enjoyable, particularly the works by Ešenvalds. Not only does conductor Sirmais possess a unique talent in choir conducting, but he has the ability to build a choir that achieves world wide renown. While perhaps this CD is not the most memorable by Kamēr…, it is still a notable collection by a stellar choir.

Heaven Grey, which last year released a new album called Falling Mist, describes itself as a “doom gothic metal” band. That usually means aggressive guitars and drums are joined with keyboards and deep, often growled, vocals. The group compares itself to such venerable ensembles as Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride.

Though it has a very active metal scene, with a large number of bands and a surplus of talented musicians, Latvia has not had many heavy metal ensembles make much of a splash abroad, apart from pagan metal group Skyforger. Perhaps this is because a lot of the Latvian heavy metal music I have heard has either been somewhat generic and unoriginal, or so very aggressive and harsh that it becomes difficult to listen to.

Although I was not very familiar with Heaven Grey, what I had heard was very positive. I figured I would give Falling Mist a chance in the hope of hearing something that neither bored me nor assaulted my ears in a negative way.

The songs are also usually characterized by lyrics that are anything but positive. The group, founded in 1993, has been plying its trade for nearly two decades. Falling Mist is the third album by the band, which released Northwind in 1998 and Memory River in 1996. Heaven Grey has gone through a number of lineup changes, partly due to tragedy: guitarist Sigvard Balzhevich died in 2004 and original lead vocalist Ansis Melderis died in a motorcycle accident in 2005.

The lineup for this album includes Ervins (Verons) Francs on vocals, guitarists Vyacheslav Nikitin and Vladimir “Dr. Alien” Beluga, Andrey Rivars on bass, Olga Klubova on keyboards and Oleg Badulin playing the drums. Other featured musicians are the band’s former drummer Ervīns Ozoliņš, as well as Reinis Melbārdis, who recorded a number of cello lines.

Falling Mist, with songs in both English and Latvian, turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyable album, full of adept musicianship and crafty song writing. I think what I like the most is that this record has engaging melodies and music, which cannot be said about much of Latvian heavy metal music that often times seems to only aspire to play as fast and aggressively as possible.

The album begins to distinguish itself in the opening moments of the first song, “The Way Back is Gone,” with its melodic keyboard and cello duet, which is joined by drums and electric guitar. The group’s attention to melody comes across very strongly in this song, particularly in the guitar lines, as well as setting the tone for the entire album with lyrics like “I am cursed! I am cursed!”

A more aggressive sound is heard in the song “Zudusī dzīvība,” with some particularly intricate drumwork by Badulin. Perhaps inspired by the operatic female vocals of a group like Nightwish, the song “Life” features Eugenia Petrova on soaring vocals, but also has Francs singing in a more “normal” voice (which I actually think he should do a bit more often, since the growled vocals sometimes don’t quite fit in with the often clearer sounds of the instruments). One song is presented in both English (“It’s Time”) and Latvian (“Drīz”).

Possibly my favorite track on the album is “Upe,” which best represents Heaven Grey: the engaging melody of the guitar, the pained vocals, and the overall epic, almost symphonic, sound of the song. Because the lyrics are in a native language (Latvian), they are far more engaging than some of the English lyrics presented on the record.

The album also sounds great—instruments and vocals are distinct. Poor production is just about the most common criticism I could make about Latvian metal albums.

Certainly, the bulk of the songs are a bit on the depressing side, and vocalist Francs sounds like a soul in torment for most of the record. However, with engaging melodies, musical variety, and engrossing songs, Falling Mist is by far one of the best and most consistently satisfying Latvian metal albums that I have heard, and made for very enjoyable, if gloomy, listening.

Portrait of a Latvian Beauty, a book of 113 pages and more than 120 photographs, presents a powerful visual odyssey of a Latvian refugee family after it is forced to leave Latvia for Germany and then Canada.

The author, Ilze Berzins, focuses on her mother’s story and provides a vision of the past as perceived by the “Latvian beauty” through many of her life’s wrenching changes.

In general one can trace very similar patterns for thousands of Latvian refugees who fled from the menace of the Red Army and a Stalinist occupation with all of its death threats and repressions. To be sure each family’s story has its own unique characteristics. This particular story is coloured in part by the reminiscenses of a dutiful daughter, intermingled with a touch of hero worship and a certain innocent nostalgia for a lost mythical paradise whose images have been passed down from one generation to the next.

The mother, Ilze Henriette Bērziņš (née Beldavs), was born in the Russian Empire in 1912, and died in Canada in 2008. Ironically, at the age of three, her family fled into Russia, running away from the Germans, but in 1944 she was forced to flee to Germany, running away from the Russians. This aspect of Latvia, as a major crossroad for foreign armies and killing fields, is briefly but well captured by the author in her broad overview of Latvia’s history.

The idyllic life of her mother in pre-war Latvia is described in almost poetic paragraphs. The mother spent winters in the city of Valmiera, a historical jewel on the banks of the Gauja river, but her most fervent emotional attachment was to the summer residence near Stende in Kurzeme, called Bēķi. Indeed the first chapter in the book describes the mother’s first trip by herself to Bēķi, recounting emotions and details which no doubt the author has heard countless times in the family’s kitchen.

The memory of Bēķi suffuses the book and the book well describes the dream-like impact and the virus-like contagion of such a mystic vision:

The sun always shone at Bēķi. Despite her beautiful gardens in Canada, Bēķi always remained for my mother her special enchanted place, shining all her life with untarnished nostalgia. From her rose-tinted storehouse of memory, an idyll emerged and I too became enchanted by Bēķi.

This dream of course could not survive reality and certainly not the heavy burden of Bolshevik kolhoz imprimatur. Indeed throughout all Latvia this period of occupation has left the most ugly scars and broken cement jetsam in the countryside where once natural beauty reigned. The author visited Bēķi after Latvia’s independence and was glad that her mother had not seen the devastation.

Nevertheless this corner of paradise provides the bookend statement of the importance of Bēķi. A superimposed photo of a young girlish mother walking above the tree tops is framed by the dream of Beki as stated in the mother’s “own words”:

I have been promised that, when my turn comes, I will be taken to Bēķi and to our ancestral resting place where my grandparents lie, and my parents, and my beloved husband. There I will again be free to race with the wind through the fields and meadows, wander the burgeoning woods, and then, when exhausted, happily throw myself down in the orchard under the fragrant apple trees and turn my gaze up to the limitless sky.

The book’s clear advantage is its compact nature. It can be offered to friends or younger family members who would otherwise not read a bigger and fuller tome. It offers a visual and punchy answer to anyone asking “how did you (or we) end up in Canada?”

The photographs alone provide a portal into a lost world of ancient Latvia and the Displaced Persons camps of Germany where Latvian culture pulsated as never before or after. No doubt many will be surprised by the elegant clothing worn by Latvians in czarist and independence days. Only Bolshevik anti-bourgeois ideology was able to dent this tendency for Latvians to present themselves in the best garb. One photo in particular intrigued me. As a result of wartime fuel shortages, a vintage family car was outfitted with a gasification carburetor enabling wood to be used for the internal combustion engine. Is this the next big idea that could counter the demands of a $300 oil barrel?

On a personal note I should point out a certain resonance of the experiences of my own family that parallel those of the author’s descriptions. The author’s parents met as agronomy students and married May 31, 1941. My father (born in 1914) also studied agronomy and did his practicum duties at Auce. Indeed, he might have attended the same classes. My parents married in June 1941, immediately after the Soviet army retreated ahead of Nazi Germany’s “Operation Barbarossa.” Turbulent times did not allow for the luxury of drawn-out trial “common law” cohabitation. Our family also boarded a ship from Liepāja, braving the Soviet attack planes and submarines to reach DP camps in Germany. Our trip to Canada was also rough and sea sickness was rampant. I also remember the first view of Canada at Halifax, when our ship docked at the same Pier 21 described by the author as the equivalent of Ellis Island in the United States. I do remember the ugly warehouse building of Pier 21 now a recognized historical memorial. Thereafter the view of Canada from the train window improved immeasurably with the alternating fields and forests and the many waving schoolchildren. Finally I share a common year of birth with the author and can visualize many of the described events from a similar age platform.

While the book has many positive qualities, one can always find room for alternative approaches. For example, the introductory chapter could have been better placed after the next chapter, which outlines the mother’s essential background and ancestry. The second half of the book dealing with Germany and Canada seemed at times uninspired although providing some individual masterful paragraphs. The reader is also left to guess about the last few years of the mother’s life when she became more “difficult.” Given the title it is obvious that the mother would receive the most attention. Nevertheless the father, who is mentioned almost en passant seems deserving of a much larger part in the book. Indeed, his diary and his numerous photos form the basis of much of the book’s content.

One index of the strength of attachment to Latvia by the author’s parents is the retention of the original Latvian names by their children. The author’s brother, who became crown attorney for Canada’s capital region, was frequently seen on Canadian television as Andrejs Berzins rather than “Andrew,” which was a common practice among many intent on blending in. Similarly the author herself has retained her original Latvian version of Ilze.

In conclusion I should mention that Ilze Berzins has written many books. One of these, Happy Girl, dealt with her return and experiences in Latvia. The murder mystery Riga Mortis was a book I could not lay down before having read it from cover to cover.