Look back at the academic year.

After many months of personal evolving, exploring, listening, reading, and murdering of a new language, I have come to the end of my first academic year in Vilnius. It has been a wonderful year full of uncovering lots of glorious works and witnessing many fantastic performances.

I wanted to use this post to look back at some of my favourites. So in no particular order, here are the gems of the year:

GAIDA - Obviously it would be crazy to ignore GAIDA Festival 2015. The festival is a great time and place during the Vilnius calendar, showing off cutting edge pieces from across the world and placing native Lithuanians on a level playing field. The festival's championed composers were Terry Riley and Francesco Filidei, two glorious composers indeed and it was a particular joy to witness Francesco Dillon performing Filidei's 'Ogni Gesto d'Amore' such a beautiful work indeed. Out of the Lithuanians being premiered in the festival, two composers particularly stood out for me.

 Juste Janulyte's 'Radiance' for choir and electronics is probably the single most purified rendition of her monochromatic work. The intensity and beauty was second to none, and I have discovered it will be performed in Klaipeda in September so need to run to the sea for that! The other glorious work was Ricardas Kabelis's 'Bole LT', the work for string orchestra and electronics was profoundly intense. The pulsing cluster was dark and powerful. The hypnotic sensation was mind-bending, and then the sudden appearance of 'Bolero' was a true mark of artistic insanity. As I said in the review of the concert, whether you liked it as an audience member doesn't matter, the simple fact everyone was affected shows it was one of the most profound pieces of art in the festival, and for me, throughout the year.


JAUNA MUZIKA - Another important festival within Lithuania is JAUNA MUZIKA, the festival is dedicated to electronic music and is another dedicated festival promoting Lithuanians on par with composers from across the world. A particular highlight of the festival for me was the Art Vio Quartet's performance within the festival. Two works from the concert stole my heart.


Marius Baranauskas's 'Delta Cephi' was a profoundly colourful work for cello and tam-tam. The sonorous melody of the cello combined with the shimmers and scraps of the tam-tam made for a profound work, full of creative and powerful interplay between two instruments. The sheer capacity and ingenuity of the work could rival any work for cello and orchestra, a joy to behold and hopefully I can get hold of a recording of it. Another work that affected me profoundly was Diana Cemeryte's 'Les essais c'est tout II'. The work for strings, percussion and electronics was full of subtle nuances and gestures and the poetic interaction of the ensemble was elegant throughout. Thankfully the recording of the work is on Soundcloud so enjoy!

Melos Kamerinis Moteru Choras Debut - My year wasn't just full of elegant new music festivals, I also had the joy of witnessing new ensembles try to define themselves in the music scene. The most successful one, for me, was Melos Kamerinis Moteru Choras. This all female choir had the sheer audacity to perform new works from young composers from across the world. The premieres of works by Juta Pranulyte, Matas Drukteinis, Monika Sokaite, Nathan James Dearden, Sarah Rimkus, and Monika Szpyrka were a joy to behold, but for me the greater joy came from the sheer brilliance of the ensemble. This is a highly talented ensemble with the bravery to work with upcoming composers with such gusto and bravado has to be celebrated for the great thing it really is. 

Vytautas Bacevicius - Alongside many wonderful concerts, I also was able to come across scores, or gain a deeper knowledge of glorious gems hidden within the Baltic state. One of those composers was Vytautas Bacevicius. A composer whose imagination and harmonic dare rivals the likes of Scriabin and Messiaen. His Zodis (Mots) are a collection of seven works for keyboard instruments which gave Bacevicius a space to define his own development on his own terms. The seventh mots for two pianos, for me, is the most elegant example of it. The interplay of the two instruments within this elegantly constructed landscape is just magnificent. Definitely a series of works I need to know more deeply, from a composer I cannot wait to know even more about.


Vytautas Montvila - Before moving to Lithuania, I was vaguely aware of the work of Vytautas Montvila. The small knowledge I had of his blew my mind. A music that juxtaposes native folk melodies alongside gut-wrenching harmonies and sonoristic splendour can only be celebrated for the genius it is. During my time in Vilnius I was able to get a wider knowledge of his work, discovering his modestly skilled piano works like 'Miragen' or 'Sutartines' or other monolithic works like 'Chorai' or 'Sventine poema' have been nothing but a joy. Be prepared to find more articles about him from me.


For me another joy to behold has been discovering young talent within Vilnius. As Lithuania is in a wonderfully catalytic moment in its history, the younger composers are full of energy, desire, and imagination to run into new and to redefine themselves as a nation. For me there have been some really talented composers here are just two of them:

Karolina Kapustaite - In short, I have loved everything I have heard from this composer. Her sheer imagination, combined with a brutal directness means every work hits you hard. For me the strongest works I have heard from her, were her string orchestra work which was premiered in Druskomanija '16 as well as her intensive work 'No Title' for piano, magnets and multiple performers. The exploration of colours simply stunned me and it is a joy to be able to listen to her works on soundcloud over and over again.

Jura Elena Sedyte - Stunned me with her work for saxophone quartet performed by Katarsis4 in Druskomanija '16. The work was simply and profound violent. The slow growth and evolution of the music was magnificent, starting from little murmurings and squeaks before evolving into screams and roars. I look forward to see more from her.


This year has been glorious, I cannot wait to see what the next year will bring me. 

Grazio dienos!   

JAUNA MUZIKA 16: 5 Composers, 5 Pieces, lots of amplification

Last night was the second performance in the JAUNA MUZIKA 16 festival. The concert featured five brand new works, by five different Lithuanian composers who, funnily enough, I have wittered about on here at some point in the past. The performance in the Menu Spaustuves Black Hall, was of a very high quality and the mood was just right for premieres; full of excitement, nerves, and curiosity.

The first work Delta Cephei by Marius Baranauskas, was for the smallest instrumentation, but you'd have no idea when you listened to it. The piece was inspired by a quadruple star system in Cepheus and various parameters were used to shape the colour, tempi, and motivic development. The work was powerfully austere in the opening, with only a few scraps and brushes to move the music along, but despite this it always felt very rich and full. The cellist, Povilas Jacunskas, played every gesture with beauty and grace and Tomas Kulikauskas on percussion brought out every minute detail of the tam-tam to life. The shape and nuance of the work was profound and striking, this could easily be the strongest piece I have heard by Marius. I distinctly feel Marius enters a new realm when working with a chamber group, having to bring the most out of them to build the richest and most profound music. Who needs an orchestra when you have an amplified tam-tam?

Following this came Julius Aglinskas's '...' for string quartet. Instantly the worked revealed its intentions to challenge the notion of 'quartet' by separating the group into two duos. The lack of direct interaction between the duos was curious indeed, and the electronics went on the colour and blur the sensation of what we heard in front of us. The musicality was modest, and I kept finding myself pondering how much it reminded me of 'Jesus' love never failed me yet' by Gavin Bryars or even 'Lento' by Howard Skempton. However I did find the modesty began to stray too close to predictability, I imagine if it started from even less or was more radical and sparse by stretching it over a longer period of time would have been a far more impressive work.

Then came my other personal highlight of the concert, Diana Cemeryte's Les essais c'est tout II for string quartet, percussion and electronics. With whistles and clicks the music grew. I was so enthralled I struggled to write notes about it during the performance. The musicality was profound and striking. Every note struck to my core, and gripped me. The work had me eagerly wanting more. There was such austere beauty and profound sense of violence from five instruments, the work always advanced never resting and always on the attack. The intense restriction was so strong that when the simple electronic part came to the foreground I was dumbfounded by it. A truly elegant work and it was a real luxury to listen to the premiere.

After some shuffling came a work by Albertas Navickas, called 'tylos'. The piece started being very playful and inviting with the bowed cymbals in a cheeky counterpoint with the visuals on the screen. From this the work grew, building more and more colour, and feeling like it was accelerating, then suddenly the electronics started talking and instantly I was put off by it. The simple flaw in the work is it was almost identical to 'Different Trains' by Steve Reich, and why should I listen to a different work when I could listen to Reich; if I ever wanted to. It did sadden me this fact, because it was dedicated to his Grandma's 95th birthday, which is wonderfully sweet, but the music was just a pale imitation of something else.

And then, the finale came in the form of Monika Sokaite's 'O Tu Illustrata'; a setting of texts by Hildergard von Bingen for Baritone (doubling glockenspeil), string quartet, percussion and electronics. Instantly it could be seen the work was striving to achieve something big. Starting from a very still build up of chords built upon the foundation of the bass drum. The entrance of the baritone was nice, and the melodic line was rather pretty; but the positives were kind of ruined by the fact they were soaked in reverb. The piece moved along and climaxes were rammed down the throat simply because they were loud. At times the interaction between the different entities began to fall apart, as string quartet was often drowned out by the percussion, and due to all the reverb on the baritone he lost all the wonderful clarity in his voice. It was wonderful to see the composer strive for something more, but sadly this didn't achieve much, if this concert taught us anything doing less is far more striking and powerful. Sometimes the most heartfelt and profound gesture is whispered and not shouted.

The musicians in the concert were of a wonderful calibre, five disparate pieces can be a nightmare for any ensemble to do well, but the members of the Art Vio quartet were more than up for the task. Tomas Kulikauskas on percussion showed his clout throughout the concert, and Vaidrius Smilinskas has a bright future as a singer ahead of him, would love to hear him again in the future.

The festival has been very strong this year, and I am glad to see it hasn't fallen into the trap of producing its own 'festival sound' a rarity among festivals I fear. So the organisers of the festival do deserve congratulations for the success of this year.

Marius Baranauskas: The Molten Thought

This week after lots of pottering about, I decided it would be nice to discuss some of the work of Marius Baranauskas. Some may remember I wasn't won over by his work that was recently premiered in GAIDA, but I was still positive about his overall output. This post will discuss one of the works I feel really shows off Marius with a real strength.


As I have been slowly gathering my thoughts about the thesis I will write next year, I decided to talk to Marius more directly about his work and influences and so forth. Firstly we discussed on a grander scale which composers influenced him, and almost without hesitation he pointed towards Scelsi, Lutoslawski, and Kaija Saariaho. These influences are quite obvious in his works, not to suggest he is a cheap imitation but more a response to this influence. I had also continued this by asking if composers like Grisey, Murail, or Messiaen had any impact on him; especially as his work is in the same sphere as many composers following after the French spectral works. Marius pointed out they had some impact but not as strongly as the three giants previously mentioned.

I told Marius that the one of the main reasons I wanted to include him in my thesis is he and Juste Janulyte have become probably the two composer's whose success has been shaped by Lithuania joining the EU. Lithuania's membership to the EU is far more symbolic than political as it opened up Lithuania to the world and it also places Lithuania on par with its partners in the union, which will obviously continue to impact Lithuanian music making for many years to come. In light of this I asked Marius how much influence has his native Lithuania had on his output. I thought it was an especially important question to ask when the rest of his major influences are far from Vilnius. Marius pointed to a few composers he admired, mostly for their skill and craft like Osvaldas Balakauskas or Onute Narbutaite; but he said his strongest native influence is his native tutor Rimantas Janeliuaskas. Marius said that the influence and impact of Janeliauskas on his work is extremely strong, and has heavily shaped who is he today.


Which brings me nicely to his orchestral work The Molten Thought (2006). The work like his earlier piece Talking (2002) uses orchestral instruments to replicate phonemes, in turn the piece is almost a prose recitation of a text. As The Molten Thought came later, it is a more elaborate use of this device. We had discussed when using this way of composing, does he ever focus on a particular language. Marius pointed out how pretty much all languages uses the same phonemes, with the exception of languages like Xhosi, the only difference is in Lithuania the phonemes are expressed in a single letter whereas English could take five letter for the same sound.

In this piece, the text being drawn on is by Rabindranath Tagore. The text comes from his Song offerings:

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight! When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in that moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away, in the very next moment to find in the left one its consolation. 

The text is very provocative and colourful, like many of the texts by Tagore. It is also fascinating to see how Marius and the late Jonathan Harvey have both drawn on similar ideas and influences (Speakings (2007/08) and Song Offerings(1985)). It is also curious they were both unaware both were doing similar things.  

The Molten Thought is a dark and brooding piece, which happily spends more time focusing on the phonemes it is trying to replicate. The result is quite poetic and colourful piece which has many parallels with Lontano by Ligeti. Both pieces were later uses of a new soundworld for the composer, but both have a much stronger elegance and purpose to it; due mostly to knowing how to get more out of the devices. Both move organically from one place to the next and just mesmerise with their use of colour and beauty. The Molten Thought does have the same raw impulse as Talking but there is just something about this work that grips me every time I listen. 

Enjoy the recording, and I'll be back with more next time!

GAIDA Festival: Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra

After last week's visit of the Californian Santa Claus like figure (Terry Riley), GAIDA Festival has now gotten into full swing. Last night's concert was a concert of four extremely different works, by four wildly different composers. The four composers were Marius Baranauskas, Onute Narbutaite, James Dillon, and Francesco Filidei. James Dillon needs little introduction, a vibrant composer with lots of grit. This comes together in quite solid ways in his Andromeda for piano and orchestra. The orchestra tackled it strongly, but due to the length of the concert and the acoustic dissipating the clarity of minute piano gestures  the piece did feel like it was lagging.

Francesco Filidei was a wonderful bright breath of fresh air, not just in the context of the concert, but also in the aether of contemporary music. The austerity combined with the audacity of the tonal pages in his Fiori di Fiori was just truly remarkable. GAIDA Festival chose wisely making him one of the focused composers of the festival. I won't go into more detail about Francesco as one he features in more concerts throughout the festival, but I also want to get back to talking about Baltic composers. But before I do that, I highly recommend everyone checks out Francesco Filidei's Website.

Recently in a previous post I discussed Onute Narbutaite's Kornetas and for those with good memories or the time to read the link, I sadly wasn't converted to the opera, despite my love of Narbuatite's work. Her piece in the concert kein gestern, kein morgen is a concert adaption of the aria by the same name from scene 15 in the second act. Concert adaptions of arias from the opera in theory is a very strong move, because musically the work is beautiful and well rounded, and I can imagine singers around the world would love to sink their teeth into the arias. Sadly this piece didn't entirely go to plan. The music was strong, performance was very good, even though at times the light tenor Tomas Pavilionas was drowned out by the thick orchestration. The flaw was simply this concert adaptation was too long. Being familiar with the opera I knew the significance of why the music was extended as long as it was; it was Cornet's final words before his death. Without the dramatic lead up to it, the effectiveness was ultimately lost. Which is a shame, because Narbutaite has so much more up her sleeve. Hopefully I can get back to being very positive about her new work soon.

The final piece was a work by Marius Baranauskas. He is quite a fascinating composer, a student of Janeliauskas, Marius has been highly focused on the interaction of words and music. This isn't in the traditional sense of words and music, and just writing lots of songs, but more about making an ensemble speak. In works like Talking (2002), the result is a beautiful richness and murmuring, almost like the sensation of chanting a mantra. So I was very excited to see this new work by Marius. The new work in question, Beatitudes, draws inspiration from the Sermon on the mount. As the composer points out in the programme note:

...The blessings refer to the harmonious, fulfilling, and significant humans existence and are very relevant nowadays as people are lacking a life of sense, love, and peace. 

Marius Baranauskas

His spiritual connection to the work at no point becomes sappy, overly sentimental, or pious. And the reiterations of gesture do evoke images and sensations of repeating a prayer. The thick layering of orchestral colour was rich like a good quality 85% dark chocolate, but for me it all felt to familiar. This is Marius at his most comfortable, which is a shame for me. I imagine there are still wonderful places Marius and his music can go, the potential and potency is huge. Sadly this piece simmered, but not in a way that it was boring or uninspiring, but more like after mastering a recipe for a gorgeous roast dinner you only eat this roast dinner for weeks; after a while you lose the initial beauty of the dish because of being overly familiar.

I would still highly recommend people listen to the video below of Marius Baranauskas's Talking. The work blew me away the first time I heard it, and for those who listen it would not surprise them to learn that it won the Takemitsu Prize in 2004.

The next concerts of GAIDA include performances by Ensemble 2E2M, Ensemble Repertorio Zero, Mise-en New York, CRASH Ensemble, and the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra.



What a fun time to be in Vilnius.