An introduction to an immensely talented composer

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS
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In Ondine’s new release Saudade the listener is taken over the course of an hour on an intense sensorial journey of music by the immensely talented New York-based Lithuanian composer Žibuokle Martinaityte.

The CD includes several works by Martinaityte composed by her within a span of the past seven years. They are given here superb performances by both the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra each conducted by Giedre Slekyte, with Gabrielius Alekna as the piano soloist.

The most recent of the works, the 2019 Saudade (so-ˈdädə ) takes for its title a Portuguese word that describes a bittersweet emotional state that mixes nostalgia and longing for something or someone no longer there. Martinaityte conveys her very personal emotional journey from loss to redemption into music of depth and import.

Millefleur (mēl-ˈflər) (2018) is a French word literally meaning thousand flowers that describes a perfume distilled from several different kinds of flowers, or an ornamental pattern depicting a large variety of flowers. In this work Martinaityte creates a gorgeous musical effect of splintering musical kernels into myriads of tiny pieces.

Martinaityte’s Chiaroscuro trilogy (2017) is a 3-movement work for piano and strings. Chiaroscuro (kyä-rəˈskoo-rō) the Italian word literally meaning light-dark describes the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting that creates an effect of contrasted light and shadow on a subject.

Chiaroscuro is used by the composer to depict in musical terms contrasts of the obscured and the fully seen. Divided into Tunnel, Meteor and Darkness of Light and making little observance as in much of her music of traditional compositional notions of melody, harmony, rhythm, and counterpoint, the composer instead uses changes in the density and the texture of the instrumentation to create a full palette of orchestral colors that sustain the interest of the listener.

At times the piano in the Chiaroscuro Trilogy is called upon to sound like a celesta playing an insistent figuration in its highest octave, at others it is asked to plummet to the nether regions of its range. Oftentimes it uses repetitiveness and ostinato gestures to convey in musical terms inexpressible poetic notions of the intangible or of physical changes and mutations, as in Tunnel, where the regular “bumps” in the instrumentation remind us with dry humor of times traversing interminable railroad journeys through long tunnels that cut through mountains until at last coming out at the other end to encounter once more the longed-for light.

Rafael de Acha http://www.RafaelMusicNotes.com

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”