Trio

CD Lithuanian Music in Context I. Lessons of the Avant-garde. - Vilnius, Lithuanian Music Information and Publishing Centre LMIPCCD065-066, 2011

This piece is unique for being composed thoroughly employing the twelve-tone technique, becoming the first piece of its kind in the whole of the Lithuanian music history. The composer presents a twelve-tone sequence (E, E-flat, D, A, A-flat, G, D-flat, C, F, B-flat, B, F-sharp) right away and meticulously follows it, using its original form, as well as its four transpositions. They complement each other, yet at certain points they help illuminate and articulate the timbres of individual instruments. This work, although infused with dissonance, is held together by the original sequence, repeated 90 times. Its opening tone of E functions as a guiding light for the entire process. In a more complex Allegro section the relation of the main structural unit and its derivatives, as though written by some New Viennese School composer, hinges on a tritone G – D-flat, while the clarinet and bassoon melodic lines at the backdrop are ingenuously contrived in an ostinato fashion – the method J. Gaidelis was so fond of.

Dana Palionytė