Last autumn, the new music festival “Arena” took place on the occasion of the 20th anniversary and invited the audience to concerts at the end of October, but due to the pandemic several concerts were postponed, including the planned performance of Bernard Benoliel’s lifelong work “Infinity – Edge. Transcendental Requiem” Transcendental Requiem “).

This is a requiem for all artists whose lives have been devastated by the horrors of war. For more than thirty years, this impressive piece will be heard for the first time at a time when its message resonates with each of us especially directly and indirectly. From 1982 to 1989 and after long editions, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and the conductor of VAK “Latvija” will perform their final form in 2014, on Friday, May 20, at 7 pm in one of the last concerts in the Grand Guild before its reconstruction. Led by Rene Gulikers (Netherlands), “said the organizers.

Born in Detroit, Bernard Benoliel (1943-2017) spent his youth in the United States, moved to England in the first half of the 1970s, and lived and worked in Amsterdam for the past thirty years, where he also acquired Dutch citizenship in 2001. His name is primarily associated with the management of the RVW Trust, a foundation set up by the English composer Ralph Wogan Williams to promote and develop British contemporary music. At the same time, Benoliel was active in musicology, composing slowly and carefully, countless times, leaving behind only fifteen opuses, including the Symphony, the String Quartet and the piano, as well as the impressive almost hour-long vocals. Infinity – Edge. Transcendental Requiem “.