Jānis Ķepītis: Piano Miniatures from the Manuscripts, Vol. 1

The Latvian composer Jānis Ķepītis (1908–89) has a fairly low profile even in his home country, never mind beyond its borders. His output was nonetheless substantial, with no fewer than six symphonies to his name, ten concertos, a number of large-scale choral-orchestral pieces, countless songs and choruses and a voluminous body of chamber music – almost all of it unknown. Ķepītis was himself a gifted pianist, and his hundred or so compositions for piano show a predilection for the miniature. The works here, discovered among his manuscripts, inhabit a world downstream from Skryabin and Rachmaninov, with a gentle hint of Debussy and an occasional wisp of Latvian folk-music.