Speech at the Danish Ambassador's Residence in Latvia

Speech by Søren Vincents Svendsen Founder & CEO of ToneArt / PH Pianos & PH Furniture, on the Danish Constitution Day 2026 at the Danish Ambassador's Residence in Latvia where a PH Grand Piano was center stage.

Read the full speech below.

Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends:

I come from a Danish company holding the rights to produce furniture and pianos designed by the Danish designer Poul Henningsen and I would gladly promote our Danish design icon, the PH Grand Piano, but this is not the place and time for a sales pitch, at least not in the normal way.

Instead, I want to take this opportunity to make some points for a postcard about Latvia based on my experience coming to Latvia for the first time 23 years ago – and I will share with you a few life stories from Latvians – and I will try to focus on those points in the context of our Danish Constitution Day and the values that we celebrate.

Latvia is a nice country with wonderful people. You can enjoy a lovely summertime and lots of sandy coastlines. The countryside in Latvia is beautiful and Riga is a small, international city. You can enjoy lots of culture, art and music and great food. I am sure it will also be the experience of all of you who are visiting Latvia just for a few days.

Of course, there are also challenges to write about and I will just mention the demographic development and the huge decline in the Latvian population, and it is forecasted that the Latvian population will decline further – more than in any other EU country. Seriously, such a development is devastating for any economy and country.

It is my experience that many Latvians are aware of the problem, but they feel that after finally having gained independence and freedom, immigration is for many not the answer to a declining population – also considering the already big minority of people with Russian background. Latvians love their country and they will do all it takes to protect it, and we can understand this mindset also considering the historical context and all the baggage of many families.

And talking about the historical context and the family baggage, please let me share a story. We are working with a shipping company owned by a Latvian woman, Viola – and she has been doing really well. We had a coffee one day, and Viola told me how the situation with the Russian aggression affects her decision-making by investing in assets that are easy to move and can be used outside of Latvia.

She was also telling me that she had started to study her family history and that study had reminded her how lucky she had been by being part of the generation of her family having more than 35 years of freedom and lots of opportunities.

Prior to the independence and freedom in Latvia, Latvia was occupied for 45 years and suppressed by the Soviet regime and family members had been deported to Siberia and if returning, they had very few opportunities and could not even settle down or live anywhere close to Riga – and Viola also discovered in her family research that during both the second and the first world war and before that time, several family members had been killed.

Therefore, despite of the current situation and big uncertainties about the future, Viola - this successful Latvian businesswoman – feels fortunate…

Let me share a story of another Latvian power-woman who is also carrying around with a heavy family baggage… It is the story of Anda who graduated 25 years ago from the Art Academy in Riga and today an internationally renowned glass designer and running a factory in Riga together with her husband and 40 employees producing unique glass designs and artworks.

Anda participated at our showroom in Copenhagen last year during the design event and afterwards she wrote in a text message: “I have spent four fulfilling days and been swimming in design, democracy and in an ocean of freedom. An ocean that Latvia could have been part of if it had not been occupied by the Soviets. I had tears in my eyes when I came back to Latvia” and this year on May 9 she wrote: “Today is a sad day for us because the so-called liberation on May 9 in 1945 means occupation for us”. I believe these short messages tell us so much about the sentiments and feelings in this country.

This year, Anda cannot participate in our design event (next week) because she will be in Kiev, at the Art Museum, installing her newest 18-meter-long artwork: The Table of Freedom – it is a dining table made up of castings in glass of handshakes between people from more than 50 countries and it symbolizes a spine of strength and resilience. Anda is using this unique artwork as a weapon in her fight against the Russians. When we will be celebrating the end of the war with lots of people and a meal at the table, I will bring a PH Piano to Kiev – because not only will there be a need for a piano to make music – but we should bring it because this piano is symbolizing important values.

On that note – and being here at the ambassador’s residence – I cannot help sharing with you that a PH Grand Piano is very soon going to be part of the Danish ambassador’s residence in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. As I said last year, there would be many fewer conflicts in this world if there would be more PH Pianos around… and no, I am not saying that a such a piano would have prevented any conflict in that part of the world.

The point is that the design of Poul Henningsen is a strong symbol of the values that we should bring into a cruel and crazy world – and this piano is about liberated design, it provokes and inspires and it symbolizes diversity and illustrates a modern, innovative, and forward-thinking way of living – and that is also the reason that we have delivered a similar PH Piano to Willumsens Museum in Denmark, opening a new exhibition today and at this very hour – an exhibition about the Danish film director, Lars von Trier, who curated a PH Piano to be part of a broader collection of artworks that have inspired him throughout his life.

We can be happy that many critical thinkers, designers and artists back in time had the courage and the opportunity to think about culture and do designs that are still of inspiration and have shaped our life and liberal, democratic thinking. When we celebrate the Constitution Day, it is a reminder of individual rights of freedom, and a free, liberal and democratic society – and often we take these values and rights for granted.

Today, we know that they are not – but we do not understand or maybe value it the same way as people do in this country. If you really want to understand the meaning and value of freedom, you can learn a lot by listening to people in this country and their life stories. Being here – just 1 hour flight from Copenhagen – you are also being reminded of the forces that can undermine this freedom and how the family baggage from the past can prevent a transition to an “ocean of freedom”. This is not so easy to write about in a postcard, but it is part of my experience from Latvia and important for me to remember also on this day.

So, summing up, please let me thank you – Kristaps & Dans – you’re the owners of the wood working factory where you do the craftsmanship of this piano, and you are also examples of Latvians coming back and settling down after having been living abroad – I know you question that decision at times, but this country needs you and so do we.

Thank you to our Danish Ambassador for letting us be here at this wonderful garden, thank you to the Danish Chamber for letting me take the floor and thank you to all of you for listening – and now we should listen to the real thing:

We are celebrating our Danish Constitution with music and singing and I will close by repeating my words from last year: Maestro, please play and let the music be loud enough to be heard “over there” where they challenge our values – and let the music and singing unite us further in our own resilience so we can keep our “ocean of freedom”.

Happy Danish Constitution Day!

Søren V. Svendsen

Founder / CEO ToneArt