After a few days away, I am back and ready for another blog post. As I hadn't quite finished the little collection of Lithuanians mentioned by BBC Music Magazine, I wanted to make sure I round that off before I return to Vilnius at the end of the month. Thankfully there are only two left, so it was be so much of my back against the wall to finish this off. So this brings me on to the striking work of Raminta Serksnyte.
Raminta Serksnyte (1975) is quite a curious composer, mostly due her unique ability to strike a listener, even after her intense gear change around 2002. Her early work has inflections of intense postromantic musicality, combined with beautiful imagery of forests, icebergs, and other pastoral metaphors. The musical language in these early works the extended tonality combined with elegant orchestration and magical craftsmanship make her works still striking today; even if they are quite a far cry from her more recent output.
The work I want to focus on this week, is the first piece of hers I came across: De Profundis (1998) is a work for string orchestra and is a rather curious stand alone work. The opening gitters build slowly in a way that is rather akin to Kutavicius. The quasi-minimalist repetitions lull you into the piece before suddenly smashing it with intense ferocity. The work quickly abandons the opening, leaving it as a distant memory as it progresses through its block architecture. The sense of drive is never lost, even in its densest passages. The constant abandon of introduced ideas can make a piece feel unstructured or unfocused, but like in works by Stravinsky, the nonchalant throwing away of material is one of the most striking features of the piece.
The slower passages despite, being just as brief as the more frantic material, are luscious and mesmerising. The way notes just hang in space just strikes the heart, admittedly in this case it strikes the heart with pins into a voodoo doll more than cupid's arrow. The piece constantly builds then suddenly stops and builds again, this constant hocket and hiccuping leaves the sense of unease right in the forefront of the piece, without having to be particularly intense on the surface level.
The orchestration of the group is as striking as it is rather simplistic. I point this out, simply because in later works like Almond Blossum (2006) and Oriental Elegy (2002) orchestration because far more akin to the likes of Pascal Dusapin or Jonathan Harvey, with the use of extended colourings to really make the orchestral palette explode with as much colour as a painting by Jackson Pollock.
De Profundis eventually arrives at a beautiful release, which has very similar echoes of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments, with the use of extended harmonies and slow moving chorales bringing the work to a rather beautiful shimmering end. I am curious how much the original Psalm (129/130(depending on your numbering of psalms)) impacted the structure of this piece. But the below quotation does fit rather elegantly with the piece structurally.
The slower passages despite, being just as brief as the more frantic material, are luscious and mesmerising. The way notes just hang in space just strikes the heart, admittedly in this case it strikes the heart with pins into a voodoo doll more than cupid's arrow. The piece constantly builds then suddenly stops and builds again, this constant hocket and hiccuping leaves the sense of unease right in the forefront of the piece, without having to be particularly intense on the surface level.
The orchestration of the group is as striking as it is rather simplistic. I point this out, simply because in later works like Almond Blossum (2006) and Oriental Elegy (2002) orchestration because far more akin to the likes of Pascal Dusapin or Jonathan Harvey, with the use of extended colourings to really make the orchestral palette explode with as much colour as a painting by Jackson Pollock.
De Profundis eventually arrives at a beautiful release, which has very similar echoes of Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments, with the use of extended harmonies and slow moving chorales bringing the work to a rather beautiful shimmering end. I am curious how much the original Psalm (129/130(depending on your numbering of psalms)) impacted the structure of this piece. But the below quotation does fit rather elegantly with the piece structurally.
My soul has stood by his word.
My soul has hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch, even until night, let Israel hope in the Lord.
For with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. - Psalm 130
I will of course leave you to make up your own minds on this, but in the mean time enjoy this wonderful rendition of the work by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra under the baton of Matthias Foremny.
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