Ilona Brege
*20 May 1959
Works by Ilona Brege
Biography
ILONA BREGE was born on the 20th of May 1959 in Riga. She graduated the Latvian Academy of Music, studying piano with Ella Strazdiņa (1983, Mg.) and composition with Pauls Dambis (1986, Mg.). Ilona Brege’s music encompass many genres - symphonic music, as well as chamber opera Living Water and extensive Requiem, chamber music and vocal compositions. Among interprets of Ilona Brege's music should be named conductors Andris Nelsons, Ainārs Rubikis, Andris Poga, Normunds Šnē, Tovijs Lifšics, soloists Baiba Skride, Eva Bindere, Ula Ulijona, Ramon Jaffe, Michael Chulpajev, as well as orchestras: Kremerata Baltica, Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonietta Riga, and other. In 2010, she won the Latvian Grand Music Award in category "Best new composition of the year 2009" with Violin-Concerto what was premiered on January 17, 2009, by soloist Baiba Skride and Sinfonietta Riga.
About the music
Review by Inese Lusina (newspaper "Diena" 02.02.2023.) about premiere of Symphony No.4, in January 2023: She purposefully and persistently became a real master of this field. First – as a brave experimenter, then – as a painter of refined sound colors and a builder of purposeful constructions. Well, an ambitiously appealing force has also arrived. This is creative maturity - the moment when talent, professional skill and the truth of the experience are already intertwined so closely together that they can no longer be separated and dissected separately. Quite simply - everything here is real. Listening to the ambitious, alienatingly industrial, rhythmically syncopated musical language of the first part of the symphony, we witness the iron grip of fate itself and a hopeless, lonely struggle in a dark room. /../ The composer really feels the orchestra and knows how to use its color possibilities. It's her home.
