Vilnius is the capital
of Lithuania. It is also the birthplace
of Jascha Heifetz one of the world's
ikonic violinists. It is therefore fitting
that the solo violin is at centre-stage
for three of the four works on this
disc.
Barkauskas was born
in Kaunas into a family sympathetic
to music. He graduated first as a maths
teacher and then took up music, qualifying
in 1959. He continued his studies in
Moscow and imbibed new and disturbing
currents at the Warsaw Autumn Festivals
1964-1970 hence the clutch of Lutosławski-style
titles. In 1964 at the age of 33 he
wrote the cycle Poetry,
the first Lithuanian serial composition.
He has written six symphonies the last
of which earned him the Lithuanian National
Award, one opera and eight concertos.
The mercurial Jeux
for violin and orchestra is
in seven panels with the longer three
flanked and separated by the other shorter
four. It was written for the 2002 Consonances
Festival in Saint Nazaire. Joachim was
the theme of the festival that year.
The violin and its spectral, carnal
and meditative aspects are brilliantly
explored through a moving tableau of
obsessive repetition, Waltonian petulance,
barbed percussive figures and phantom
landscapes. It's pretty magically done
but Barkauskas's apparatus is of the
avant-garde even if mediated through
a softening amalgam of Bach (the partitas
and sonatas) and Walton. The writing
is lean and clean.
The Jeux was
written for and dedicated to Graffin
and it is Graffin who plays Barkauskas's
Partita for solo violin. The
Partita has been recorded
many times and has carried the composer's
name across the world. Its style owes
something to Bach and a lot more to
nationalistic models and popular dances
such as the beguine and rumba. Once
again the orientation is second Viennese
school starting with Berg. Graffin does
not disappoint in this darkly brilliant
piece.
Nobuko Imai is the
other famous 'anchor' for this CD. She
plays the two unaccompanied Monologues;
both rather severe monochrome by comparison
with the Partita. She plays them with
adroit dedication but these are works
that have very little surface glamour.
The four movement Duo
Concertante returns us to buzzing
activity and the full orchestra. The
two soloists play chase and exchange
games with phrases intoxicatingly swapped
between the two. It was commissioned
and premiered by conductor Robertas
Severnikas and is dedicated to the Japanese
diplomat Chuiune Sugihara and his wife
Yukiko. Sugihara was in Lithuania during
1940. Schindler-like he saved some 10,000
Lithuanians from death at the hands
of the Nazis by granting them visas
to Japan. Barkauskas wanted to catch
some flavour of Gallic exuberance and
of Japan. In this he is successful.
The Japanese element is unmistakable
in the second movement and the Gallic
in the first and third - heck it's almost
Poulenc at times; Ravel at others. The
soloists are called on for the utmost
virtuosity with surging coordination,
furious motion - not so much a Lark
Ascending but a Lark on rocket fuel.
The intoxicating bravura of the two
instruments recalls Arthur Benjamin's
Romantic Fantasy (violin, viola
and orchestra) filtered through the
bitter lyricism of Wilfred Josephs’
music for The Great War and Thomas
Wilson's incidental music for Cloud
Howe.
With
these titles you might instantly reach
for the identikit and assume a recital
of Lutosławski lookalikes. Well
not quite. Barkauskas is not a soft-focus
nationalist. He is an architect of fragile
textures and constant motion
but he has struck an accommodation with
avant-garde effects. Through the clicks
and clunks, chimes and occasional squeals
a singing soul is at work - and sometimes
he can be a very gentle soul as in as
the fourth movement of the Duo. These
notably well-balanced textures sometimes
recall the seething activity of Shostakovich's
last symphony but without the allusions
to other works from the classical greats.
While Jeux just ends unresolved
the rush of the finale (movement V)
of the Duo Concertante is viscerally
exciting, nervy with bongos, rapped
out by the brass and finally consigned
to silence by a roared Eventyr
shout from the men of the orchestra
as the two soloists gambol together
into the final strait. No wonder the
audience whoop - it's an exhilarating
end to a fantastic piece not without
angularities. and with a reminiscence
of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
Rob Barnett
Philippe Graffin (violin) 
