CRITICS
...Gints Glinka is without a doubt a promising talent!
Gidon Kremer
..this young man has a great future!
David Geringas
I consider Gints Glinka to be one of the brightest conductors of the younger generation, he is doubtless something extraordinary!
Peteris Vasks
Glinka let us realize how great is the symphony...
[Beethoven Fine Music Radio]
Gints Glinkas’ presence and passion were the basis of his active and temperamental conducting style. His ability to give all to the music, his energy and temperament gave rise to great enthusiasm from the public, which rose to their feet at the end of the concert. Not of small importance the fact that Gints Glinka conducted the whole programme [Bartok Concerto for orchestra] by heart.
Latvian TV1
Gints Glinka. The name of this Latvian conductor who studied and
worked for a brief period in Copenhagen is worth remembering. The 30
year old musician headed a very promising concert in the Great
Philharmonic Hall (November 1, 2005.).
Let us express the fervent hope that this talent fulfills its
promise. Because the conducting world has too many flashy acrobats,
a great deal of emptiness wanting to hide behind excessive
advertising or meaningless rhetoric, and too few mature
personalities. Gints Glinka cannot be considered to be just an adept
advertising performer. Soon it will be possible to say about him:
this is a conductor given by the mercy of God. A conductor with
multifaceted contact with the orchestra, from gentle plasticity to
firm gestures of his will. With a thorough knowledge of the score,
irrespective of whether it is before the conductor’s eyes or not.
It was with just such an outstanding performance that the conductor
achieved victory over the entrenched armor of the orchestra which is
mixed with contempt, hostility, idleness and ignorance. In
conclusion, let us share with you a secret that is almost impossible
to fulfill and yet justified: may this wonderful musician and
conductor continue to develop in the direction of the genius to
which he is already so close, and yet maintain enough distance as a
reminder of the highly refined figure whose enchantingly subtle
technique and penetratingly deep gaze lit up the Berlin
Philharmonic.
Music criticism archive, St. Petersburg
Glinka not only could accompany his soloist. Also he was able to elicit the great romantic suck from the musicians. Tchaikovsky’s Italian capriccio and the darker, brilliant orchestrated “Spanish Capriccio” by Rimsky-Korsakov both had plenty. Lots of generous brass, cheerful sunshine melodies by Tchaikovsky, saturating playing of the strings in Rimsky-Korsakov and not least a thoroughly competent designing – all of it without score – made the re-listening to Glinka positive. Technically as well as musically. Maybe he is a man, to whom the orchestra [Copenhagen Philharmonic] should make a closer connection?
POLITIKEN
There is something peculiar about the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. Normally it is placed somewhere below the top of the first division. But under certain conditions it is suddenly able to play like being in the Super League. Maybe, no other Danish orchestra is more dependant of inspiration and proper working conditions. And luckily the inspiration was there this evening.
Berlingske Tidende
The young Latvian, Gints Glinka achieved miraculous results with the
orchestra in the Polish premiere of that difficult work [Carl
Nielsen’s 4th Symphony]. He is a fascinating conductor, making music
in the way the greatest maestros do! Soon the whole world will be
speaking about him… The other works, put together with exquisite
taste by the maestro, were the excellent and highly interesting
overture “Lauda” by contemporary Latvian composer Peteris Vasks and
the First Violin Concerto of Szymanowski. This evening can be justly
described as one of the true revelations of this concert season.
Nowy Glos Robotniczy
Only sometimes the cautious ear could find the composer [Carl Nielsen] a bit too talkative, stretching a little too much the capricious bantering of the winds, but it was precisely here that the masterly skills of the conductor could be noticed. It was he alone who delivered the impression that no bar in the entire piece was out of place, and was able to impart to each phrase and entrance the appropriate role. Conducting from memory, he sustained uninterrupted eye contact with the orchestra, the importance of which was proved by their performance – vivid, spontaneous, ardent and inspired. Under such an extraordinary baton one cannot play in any other way...
Kurier Lodzki
Energy and inspiration for life – can anything like that be given by
a purely Latvian Symphony music programme excluding the most
favorite hits of the world classics or provocative surprises of the
contemporary sound-art? It turns out to be true if only done with
burning heart and clever mind. That was exactly this “chemical
combination” that defined the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra
concert Peteris Vasks and his compeers – the central event of the
Latvian symphony music year, at choice of the main hero of the
evening, composer Peteris Vasks conducted by the young Latvian
conductor Gints Glinka.
At the symphony music concert on April 8th at the Great Guild we
witnessed the brightest, most profound and passionate interpretation
of Peteris Vasks’ Symphony No. 2 (1999) ever experienced in Latvia
(after its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall in London under
conductor Yakov Kreizberg).
Gints Glinka directed the playing of the voluminous and fairly
complicated Peteris Vasks’ Symphony No. 2 by heart thereby
liberating all senses that allowed him to concentrate on the very
essence of music.
Having passionately and fully given himself to music and completely
yielding to its emotional density, Glinka does not allow himself to
lose control. He guides the orchestra with a firm hand, decisively
and purposefully building the musical architecture of symphony –
from an infernal machine to birds’ garden created in one’s dreams
and an allusion of Latvian folk song, not allowing it sound like
commonplace cliché. Control and perfection are the powers that push
the process on towards the inevitability required by P. Vasks’
music. Interpretation of the symphony grows into an expanded survey
of the whole music time, not losing the acute sharpness and
particular beauty of every moment.
Diena.lv
In his debut with the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra Gints
Glinka proved two things which confirmed statements that he had made
in advance - it is possible to lift tested material to a new level,
displaying the principle of concerts as such in a new light, and it
is possible to transmit the accumulated emotional idea to the
listener.
Gints conducted Strauss' "Don Juan", Liszt's First Piano Concert and
Beethoven's 7th Symphony. All of these compositions are very well
known, but in the context of Gints Glinka we can talk about making
music, about an explanation of the ideas of the compositions in full
line with the intentions of the composers, with the descriptions
that were once given by their contemporaries.
This is a young conductor and one is fascinated by the extent of his
thinking. It takes our orchestra a very short period of time - just
a few beats - to put an end to any thought that its level of quality
is not guaranteed. How on earth did the orchestra achieve such
progress? The work of the conductor can once again be noticed,
tasted, evaluated - that hasn't been true for a long time indeed.
The conductor's categorical insistence that "this will happen the
way that I want, or it won't happen at all", gains obvious
confirmation in the event.
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