These are indeed first
recordings and were first released as
part of the Lithuanian Music Information
and Publishing Centre series
on LMIPC CD 030. It was the second in
that series; the first being a disc
of music by Vladas Jakubenas.
Clearly Bacevičius
was something of a revolutionary upstart.
His Poème électrique
recalls Markevitch and Mossolov. In
the 1929 Piano Concerto we think of
the works of Cowell and Markevitch again.
There’s certainly nothing approaching
a nationalist romantic essay although
the writing is very accommodating of
exquisite Szymanowski-like harmonies
and of discords. There's also a crunching
brashness about this music that recalls
the sardonic ways of Kurt Weill mixed
in with saltier episodes in Walton's
contemporary Sinfonia Concertante.
The Symphony No. 2
della Guerra leaves you in little
doubt that it is about raw brutality
and crackling mechanistic energy. The
work is a three movement rearing storm
of fury. However a more delicate - even
tender - central section has an elegant
Gallic interlude for harp solo.
Two decades later came
the Cosmique, Symphony No. 6.
This is in a single movement. The music
is mournful, hunted and haunted, elegiac.
We hear a tortured lyricism extruded
from the quieter sections of The
Rite of Spring. The music becomes
more protesting and bombastic as it
careers towards its close. This is a
fascinating example of the cosmic obsession
shared with Scriabin, Jolivet and Varese.
The last work here
is Graphique which was influenced
by the abstract work of Bacevičius’s
friend Adomas Galdikas. It was originally
written in graphical form à
la Ferneyhough, Cage and Wuorinen
but then transcribed into conventional
notation. It is music of the out and
out avant garde.
Bacevičius wrote
music that is often tough and of a type
indebted to Schoenberg. This style would
never have been acceptable if Bacevičius
had lived in Lithuania rather than being
an almost constant wandering pilgrim-refugee.
Rob Barnett
Toccata
Catalogue
Aidas Puodžiukas (piano) 
Sound
Sample 
