Žibuoklė MARTINAITYTĖ (b. 1973)
Saudade (2019) [16:50]
Millefleur (2018) [13:01]
Horizons (2013) [20:39]
Chiaroscuro Trilogy (2017) [18:45]
Gabrielius Alekna (piano)
Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra/Giedrė Šlekytė
rec. 28-30 July 2020, Grand Hall of the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society, Vilnius, Lithuania
ONDINE ODE1386-2 [69:25]
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė was born to Lithuanian parents in St. Petersburg, grew up in Kaunas, and studied composition at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre in Vilnius. One of her teachers was the Lithuanian composer Bronius Kutavičius. After Lithuania’s independence, she lived for over a decade in New York City. Although she has composed in many genres including electro-acoustic sound installations, her output for orchestra best reflects her many concerns. Judging by what is on display here, one tends to agree with Frank J. Oteri who wrote the informative booklet notes.
The four works recorded here span some five or six years of Martinaitytė’s recent output. Horizons, the earliest and longest work here, is remarkably resourceful in terms of orchestral mastery. The music already exhibits many features that may be regarded as hallmarks of her music making: long sustained tones and tremolos, repeated figurations and various slides. The notes tell us that the piece was inspired by the films Cloud Atlas and The Hours as well as Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveller. I have neither seen the films nor read the novel but this did not prevent me from liking the music. It is a splendid achievement. The composer shows a masterly handling of large-scale orchestral forces and a remarkable ability to sustain long symphonic argument. The piece is built on a vast arch form. The basic ideas derived from the films and the novel rather suggest an absence of linearity of the musical unfolding process. Yet the composer succeeds in creating some strongly atmospheric flow of sometimes contrasted episodes. The main body of the piece may be experienced as a massive build-up (albeit incorporating contrasting episodes) almost abruptly followed by a wonderful passage in which the members of the cello section repeatedly plays ghostly up and down scales of natural harmonics, each at their own pace “as though trying to paint a rainbow in the sky”. This is brutally torn apart by violent brass expostulations. At the end, however, the music quietly dissolves with a brief restatement of the cello episode.
Millefleur (literally thousand flowers) refers to the name given to the flowery backgrounds of Medieval and Renaissance tapestries. One of the most world famous examples is La Dame à la licorne which is to be seen in the museum of the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris. The composer described her work as “acoustic hedonism, a search for acoustic pleasure, as though walking through a beautiful sonic garden and taking delight in it”. She had to find a way to suggest these botanical representations often delicately drawn. She did so by way of “multiple microscopic sonic gestures such as harmonics in the strings and subtle dynamic swells in other orchestral groups”. By so doing she creates a wonderful, shimmering backdrop out of which a “more pronounced main image” momentarily emerges until the initial shimmer is restated.
Saudade, the most recent work here, tends to confirm the composer’s firm grip on her material and on her handling of large orchestral forces. She does so with a formidable imagination although she mostly avoids any all-too-frequent gimmicks used in some contemporary music. True, she calls for some unusual playing techniques (in one or two instances, the brass players are requested to sing while breathing into their mouthpieces, and the harpist has to play a range of strings with the palm). This, however, is always tastefully done and briefly adds to the orchestral colours. Once again, the piece is structured as a vast arch. It begins mysteriously, somewhat ambiguously, with breathing sounds (I was somewhat reminded of Kutavičius’s sound world here). Afterwards, the music unfolds in waves of varying density and progressively builds-up to a mighty climax capped by a long gong resonance; out of that the music seems to regain some momentum but this remains unresolved. Another tolling build-up is again cut short while the bass-grounded rumble goes on for a while until a third tentative build-up is interrupted by the panicking ringing of the tubular bells that eventually leads into the void. In Portuguese, Saudade means a deep emotional state of nostalgic or melancholic longing for someone or something absent. The piece also reflects on the composer’s personal experience – the death of her father and her immigration to the States – so that this substantial score is also one of her most personal utterances.
Chiaroscuro Trilogy, scored for piano and string orchestra, is somewhat different. It falls into three parts as suggested in the title, but the piece plays continuously. It is not a piano concerto proper: the piano is more of a primus inter pares. The first part, Tunnel, has a mainly dark, obsessional character, hammering its way from the lower register by way of tremolos and piano clusters so that there is a suggestion of some shamanistic ritual (another tip of the hat to Kutavičius maybe). The second part, Meteors, is on the contrary all light, again suggested by various tremolos from the piano that eventually descends into its bottom range. The third part, Darkness of Light, is somewhat more ambivalent as the title suggests. The piano leads the procedures with punctuation from the strings but the music eventually tiptoes away lightly.
Martinaitytė is a composer who has things to say and who knows how to say them best, as the pieces in this recent release amply show. She has a remarkable flair for telling orchestral textures while keeping a strong grip on her material. These often beautiful works receive committed and finely recorded performances. I for one look forward to hearing more of Martinaitytė’s music in the not too distant future. This excellent release is warmly recommended.
Hubert Culot
