Jânis Ivanovs is regarded as Latvia’s most distinguished symphonic composer. Although Ivanovs composed numerous vocal, piano and chamber works, as well as symphonic poems and concertos, it is the 21 symphonies, often drawing on the folk-music of the Latgale district of Eastern Latvia, that define his musical output. Pathos, colour, intensity and an expansive musical language are Ivanovs’ musical fingerprints. A powerfully dramatic voice is very evident in Symphony No. 8, likened to ‘thunder and lightning cleansing the air’. The composer’s last completed symphonic work, Symphony No. 20, is his most personal, ‘the song of songs of his soul’. This deeply tragic work, a summation of Ivanovs’ ideas and feelings, represents a struggle between mournful, lyrical visions of the past and powerful, life-asserting Beethoven-like utterances which finally prevail.