At the time when I was visiting the Riga Dome Choir School, the rehearsal of the school girls’ choir “Tiara” had just started. Although the school was once built on the basis of the Riga Cathedral boys’ choir, a few years later a girls’ choir was also born. It has been run by Aira Birziņa for more than two decades. She says: “I became associated with Riga Dome Choir School in 1997, when my daughter started studying here in the 1st grade, but I started working as a teacher in 2000.” Birziņa once took over the leadership of the choir from her sister, who moved abroad, and currently also teaches choir lessons at the Riga Cathedral Choir School.
“Just before the choir, I had a choir lesson for the 1st year, and we had the topic “Ensemble”. In this topic, the most visible components of the daily work process of the choir, when we create vocal culture, intonation, rhythmic ensemble, ensemble of the whole choir, each group ensembles… When I go to lead the choir after these choir lessons, these lectures are very similar to my work in the choir. In each rehearsal, there is everything – both creative work on the piece and learning the sheet music, understanding the content, and at the same time taking responsibility .
A conductor alone is nothing without the presence of singers or an orchestra. In the words of Imanta Kokar, the rehearsal process is 90 percent out of 100.
The rest of what happens in a concert or show is a small part of it. And you have to go for it with 110 percent in every attempt, because otherwise there won’t be a hundred,” Aira Birziņa aptly sums up the work of a teacher specific to the Riga Dome Choir School. Along with other subjects, you also have to study a specialty here, and as the name of the school suggests, the choir is at its center.
In a short conversation, I asked Katrina from the seventh grade and Marta, Tīna and Anna, who will graduate from the ninth grade this year, what it is like to be a part of the Riga Doma Choir School. “We’re very, very tight-knit,” Martha says. “Because we are few people in the school, so everyone knows everyone, everyone has a good relationship. We perform together as a school all the time, and it unites us.”
“It’s always a team effort,” Anna adds. “We trust each other, especially at concerts, that everything will be fine. Everyone has a responsibility.”
“Also, all the teachers are supportive. Also, for example, the Latvian language teacher has the greatest understanding that we as musicians participate in concerts, that we have rehearsals…” emphasizes Tīna.
“And also the fact that everyone is musical. We are on the same page,” Katrina adds.
Studying in such a school means a lot of extra work, but the girls say: the more you do, the more you can do. This will be the last year for three of them at the Riga Cathedral Choir School, as they have decided not to connect their professional life with music and continue their studies elsewhere, confirming the ancient truth that music and mathematics are closer than it seems.
“Yes, Marta and I will go to the 1st gymnasium,” laughs Tina. “That’s why this concert will be very special for us, because it will be the last.”
“Now everything I didn’t want before, I enjoy much more, knowing that these are the last months,” smiles Anna.
“I believe it will be very emotional because we will sing the whole school together. I can’t wait! We also sing a colossal repertoire. For example, [Raimonda Tigula dziesma] “Sea of Love” is very close to my heart,” says Marta.
“This will be a very special concert, because we have never had all the school choirs spend a whole part of the concert on stage at the same time. And there will be a lot of interesting guests, graduates of our school, who are very recognizable people,” says Tina.
And indeed – when browsing the concert participants, the number of soloists and conductors listed alongside the four-hundred-strong choir is on ten lines. “Latvian Voices”, “Framest”, Krista Audere, Kaspars Ādamsons, Jēkabs Jančevskis, Asnate Rancāne, Jolanta Strikaite-Lapiņa and more, and more.
“The biggest challenge that comes with such anniversaries of maturity – we are so rich and with such a gorgeous family of graduates that we can no longer make it our goal to make bouquets with absolutely everyone. It is already becoming impossible!” This is what conductor Gints Ceplenieks says, who has also been the director of the Riga Cathedral Choir School for eight years.
“When I was entrusted with creating this concert, I tried to answer myself from the beginning, what is this school,” Kārlis Krūmiņš – the school’s acting teacher and the director of the upcoming anniversary concert – joins the conversation. He found the answer in the special symbiosis of pedagogues and students: “This is how we solve this story: the concert is in two parts, where the first part is dedicated to the pedagogues, and the second to the students.
In one part we get a little closer to the work of a teacher and their thoughts about what this work is, their memories of their teachers, but in the second part we see what this work culminates in as a collective choir.”
The director thought it was especially important to highlight the performance of the teachers of the thought school, which often remains in the background behind the success of the soloists. Therefore, they will be seen both on stage and in small video interviews.
“Of course, several teachers here are also involved in their artistic practice, but not all of them are soloists. There are people who have been working here for 30 years and have invested a lot in the growth of certain artists, but on the stage we already see these artists, we don’t see the work done behind the scenes This is exactly what the school is about – a lot has been invested, and we want to say thank you to those investors,” explains Krūmiņš.
In this context, Krūmiņš himself has also thought a lot about his work as a teacher, who is a qualified theater director, but feels himself more and more as a teacher. He has been working at Doma Choir School since the creation of the musical specialty in 2016, but he is not a graduate of this school himself. How does he see the place of RDKS in the family of Latvian schools? “This is a very good school, and it is a wonderful opportunity both for these young people and for us as a society, that there is such a place where you can prepare people at such a high level who, after graduating from this school, can compete with very good results both locally and worldwide.”
In the thirty years of its existence, the Riga Doma Choir School has grown to the maximum number of students allowed by the premises – from the first to the 13th grade (because there are four courses in the high school), about three hundred children study here, for the competition in the first grade there are three to four children per place . I asked the director of the school, Gintas Cepleniek, what are the cornerstones on which the Riga Thought Choir School is based today.
“The school was born with less than 100 children in total in the first year, initially only with a boys’ choir, which now also has a girls’ choir, a 1st-2nd grade choir, a high school choir, and now also a gospel choir, all of equally high quality. But probably the greatest “cornerstone”, support and value of the school is the founder of the school, Jānis Ehrenštreits, who has put these important values for the school in the foundations of the school – both professional and human contact, as well as the combination of such an ideal school and environment,” says the director. “Our task and sacred duty is to continue this, because it is a great value that the children here get from mutual contact in all collectives. The most valuable thing that is in collective music is this contact, where they learn socialization not only between classmates, but in the age stages of several classes Collective music-making brings all the children together in one team, with one goal and understanding of what the process and purpose are.
It creates a harmonious and socially stable personality in every little one from the first grade to the thirteenth.”
On the evening of April 30, the sold-out 30th anniversary concert of the Riga Dome Choir School will be heard live on the air of Latvian Radio 3 “Klasika” and a day later it will also be shown on Latvian Television. But soon after that, the school will be in trouble – already this summer, it will move to other premises for several years, as the school building is expected to be thoroughly renovated.
