Prayer for a Mother (1978) is the earliest work by Vasks on this disc and provides not only an arresting opening but perhaps a benchmark for the other works recorded here. It has the same restless energy, in search of peace, as the Górecki of that time, but also something that one might describe as Mahlerian, and the text by Imants Ziedonis gives the composer everything he could want in terms of emotional response. Laure Teivāne is the ideal soloist, her voice lacking neither subtlety nor power.

I do not find the same qualities in Laudate Dominum (2016), which sounds instead like a bombastic neo-Baroque/modal orchestral celebration intercalated with endless choral meanderings of more penitential tone. And the neo-Baroque/neoclassical quality is also very much present in the Missa (2005), whose moments of brilliance, such as the orchestral opening to the Sanctus, are so often subsumed in a formulaic reimagination of the Rococo. It is not a work that evidences huge structural integrity, in spite of the magnificent performance it receives here. The final Prayer for Latvia, to a poem by Velta Toma, is of the moving-bombastic style: one cannot help being moved by the sentiments but simultaneously astonished by the military-march quality of the music.

Knowing other, highly impressive music by Vasks as I do, I cannot help but find this disc disappointing, though certainly valuable for its excellent version of the Prayer for a Mother.