Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973)
Nunc fluens. Nunc stans for percussion and string orchestra (2020) [16:05]
Ex Tenebris Lux for string orchestra (2021) [24:18]
Sielunmaisema for cello and string orchestra (2019) [34:50]
Pavel Giunter (percussion) Rokas Vaitkevičius (cello)
Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra/Karolis Variakojis
rec. 2121, Grand Hall of the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Society, Vilnius
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
ONDINE ODE1403-2 [75]
The Lithuanian composer, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė seems, in the last few years, to have achieved a breakthrough into the elite group of contemporary composers. On the evidence of this release and of the 2019 release of her orchestral music, it is about time.
All the pieces on this latest release feature string orchestra and superficially there are great similarities between in terms of textures and techniques used. Equally superficially, Martinaitytė’s writing here might be seen as having an affinity with Arvo Pärt though for me the closest parallel would the visionary landscapes of John Luther Adams. I say ‘superficial’ because closer inspection reveals that initial impressions can be deceptive. Sometimes in reviewing discs, I find myself caught up by a rush of enthusiasm to review a recording as soon as possible. I am very glad I held back in the case of this disc as my admiration for the music contains has grown with each of many, many listens to it.
The opening piece, Nunc Fluens. Nunc stans, is probably the most impressive and it will certainly give the inquisitive listener a good idea of the joys of Martinaitytė’s music. Slow moving, meditative string writing dominated by the simplest of techniques, the tremolo, is subtly decorated and highlighted by delicate percussion. Doesn’t sound like much but what an impact it makes! The title is a quotation from the philosopher Boethius about the Now which flows away (as in the transitory nature of time) and the Now that remains (as in the eternal). The piece seeks to evoke the eternal out of the transitory. It was inspired by the strange dislocation of a normal sense of time by lockdowns during the pandemic.
Across the expanse of the its first half it gathers to a glittering moment of deep emotional intensity before fading out into deliquescent music in which time seems to stand still until all that remains are the bass drones that feature so prominently in all three works included in this collection. If this description seems a little dry, listening to the piece is the exact opposite kind of experience. My reactions went from “This is ok but haven’t I heard all this before?” to “Oh! This is really rather good!” to “O my goodness!” Not the most insightful critical response ever I accept but this is music that gets one in the gut as much as in the head.
The second work featured, Ex Tenebris Lux, also grew out the pandemic and was inspired by a quotation from what the liner notes refer to as “rural Georgia based Episcopalian priest and self described spiritual contrarian Barbara Brown Taylor”. It seems such an extraordinary quotation that it merits citing in full:
“As the pandemic started sweeping the world, I came across this resonating quote ... about the darkness of winter and with it of the current era: “I’ve stopped trying to handle the darkness. I let the darkness handle me instead [...] Most of the time all it wants to do is hold me for a while — slow me down, keep me from running, cover me up long enough to remember that being in the dark doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me. It means I’m alive, and this is part of the deal”
Coming straight after Nunc Fluens, it feels like the two works are going to be too similar with their preoccupation with tremolo sounds on strings but Ex Tenebris Lux quickly goes its own way. It emerges out of fitful darkness which feels like a place of aimlessness as much as pain. When things happen in Martinaitytė’s scores they generally happen slowly if atmospherically. This is no exception. Very gradually the music gathers impetus in the gloom. but as that impetus grows so too a sense of agonising pain. Martinaitytė’s handling of these strong emotions seems to reflect the quotation by Barbara Brown Taylor where the emotion is allowed to hold sway. A dark central passage sonically reminiscent of the end of Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique is accompanied by threatening taps of the back of the bow on string. The tremolos, so directionless at the beginning of the piece, mass into shifting storm winds and the high strings start to soar above in long melody lines that seem equal parts agony and transcendence. Light breaks through from above illuminating the dark drone based music of the lower strings. The tension between these two forces almost becomes unbearable before finally the tremolos break loose in shimmering waves like the murmurations of starlings. A light filled calm settles over the music which is simply wondrous. Twittering figures deploying high harmonics festoon the darkness of the music in the bass which we realise now has remained unchanged even as the mood of the work has been so radically transformed. As with all three of the works on this recording, the extended coda, still marked by the pain and despair of its opening, stretches out toward eternity.
The ‘soul landscape’ of Sielunmaisema (which is how that word translates) seems a more straightforward evocation of places and seasons though Martinaitytė’s imagination is typically hushed and typically fertile. Winter is full of the singing of chilling winds stratospherically high on the violins. Bow taps on the strings conjure up the crunch of footsteps over frozen fields while drones bring before my eyes vast Baltic panoramas. As with the other pieces in this collection, the techniques are pretty common to any film or television composer writing today. What matters is what Martinaitytė does with those techniques. The eminently readable notes (readability is not something that can always be taken for granted with contemporary classical) included with this release point out the role of nostalgia in this particular piece. Each piece does feel like being transported back in time to some point of great meaning to the composer within a landscape she clearly loves. There seems to me a childlike wonder to these transports. By nostalgia, I should point out that, I mean the feeling not a nostalgia for older types of music. There is absolutely nothing of the pastiche about this score.
Nominally pieces for solo cello and string orchestra, they couldn’t be less like a traditional concerto since the soloist is very much integrated into the ensemble rather set against it. In the rushing figurations of the Spring movement, the solo cello is used as much for texture as for the ego of the virtuoso performer. The sounds seem to drip like meltwater and the sense of renewed life is both palpable and moving. It builds to a massive climax which catches the throat with emotion unanticipated from the piece’s bustling opening. I was left again with the sense of colliding with some powerful personal memory brought to mind by contemplation of the place. Martinaitytė has remarked that the landscape is as much an internal one as an external and there is a sense of a nostalgic place experienced from afar.
Martinaitytė’s Summer is splendidly languorous and the ubiquitous drones seem to expand the vista like the warm air of August. Everything is murmured and sotto voce and the solo cello seems to be singing its endlessly expanding lullaby to itself. To my imagination, this music comes out of that magical space between light and dark found in the summers of northern climes. The piece dissolves into a haze of harmonics like a smoke of midges.
With Autumn, the sense of heartbreak lurking in the nostalgic mood comes into closer focus. It is as if the fading of Autumn into Winter summons up a deeper sense of loss. The noble song of the soloist will no doubt remind listeners of The Summoning Veil but that is no bad thing and the string orchestra rises in an almost ecstatic manner in response to that solo song. The drones now seem almost like great slow sobs.
Performance and recording are everything a composer could dream of: committed, imaginative and with a palpable sense of excitement which I found infectious.
There is very little in Martinaitytė’s music of advanced modernist technique for the sake of showing off her technical cleverness. Technique serves inspiration and her inspiration is accessible and moving without being trite. Anyone who enjoys composers as diverse as Sibelius and John Tavener should find the music recorded here genuinely stirring and emotional. Neither does she shortchange the listener with bland, reheated romanticism. Contemporary classical music has a wholly unmerited reputation for fearsome obscurantism. Martinaitytė triumphantly hurls this nonsense down and stamps on it repeatedly.
David McDade
