The symphonic poem In the Forest (1901) by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, an outstanding painter and composer considered to be the father of Lithuanian art music, is still a fully Romantic landscape of nature, captivating with its tranquillity and mood. It displays Čiurlionis’s characteristic pictorial imagination and timbral sensitivity.

Richard Strauss’s opera Elektra (1908) is one of the finest achievements of this great German Romantic composer, who in this work, developing his ecstatic and monumental style inspired by Richard Wagner, entered the realm of musical expressionism. The symphonic suite from the opera was arranged by Manfred Honeck and Tomáš Ille in 2016.

Vytautas Bacevičius’s Symphony No. 6 (‘Cosmic’), from 1960, is considered the pinnacle of this Lithuanian composer’s late work, marked by his original theory of ‘cosmic music’. It is an avant-garde work, inspired in its modern sound by the style of Edgar Varèse, yet expressionistic in the spirit of Alexander Scriabin. Perhaps, however, the extraordinary, pulsating energy of this composition should rather be seen in the light of Bacevičius’s theory – as a sounding image of the cosmic process of shaping matter.

The Seventh Violin Concerto by Grażyna Bacewicz (1965), an outstanding Polish violinist and composer (and sister of Vytautas Bacevičius), perfectly combines the folkloric style previously associated with her with a modern, sonoristic language. It is a strikingly sounding piece, full of vital expression, with a bravura violin part.
 

Robert Losiak