Trio

Mindaugas Urbaitis chose a kind of minimalism close to its American prototype, and became its most ardent ideologue in Lithuania. He not only thoroughly studied but also promoted minimalist music in his lectures and public hearings. Some of his compositions apparently emulated the style of Philip Glass. When he heard Terry Riley’s In C at the Warsaw Autumn festival in 1969, he did not immediately fall for the music but took notice of Witold Lutosławski’s negative reaction towards the piece, which eventually prompted him to turn his attention to this new style. At the start of his career as a composer, Urbaitis was influenced by the avant-garde, but later on he composed some purely minimalist works. One of these – Trio for three melodic instruments – caused a scandal during its premiere: the audience was shocked by the endless rotation of simple structures (without any apparent ‘events’), which lasted for over an hour.

Šarūnas Nakas