A new album by Lithuanian music legend, composer Bronius Kutavičius (1932-2021), Clocks of the Past: Music for String Quartet, has been published by the Music Information Centre Lithuania, recorded by the string quartet Chordos. It is available in our e-shop MusicLithuania.com, at Discogs, Bandcamp, and on your favourite platforms.

The quartet (Ieva Sipaitytė, violin; Vaida Paukštienė, violin; Robertas Bliškevičius, viola; Arnas Kmieliauskas, cello) was joined in the recordings by a number of guest artists (Ieva Marmienė, soprano; Eglė Šeduikytė Korienė, organ; Tomas Kulikauskas, bells; Saulius S Lipčius, guitar; Kristupas Gikas, flute). In one piece, violist Robertas Bliškevičius also played the percussion part. The composer’s overview and programme notes for the album were written by Šarūnas Nakas, and the album’s artwork was designed by Neringa Žukauskaitė.

The album reveals the composer’s long-lasting development of his style through the prism of the string quartet. String Quartet No. 1 (1971) was written a year later than the Pantheistic Oratorio (a work considered by many to be the first real breakthrough of modernism in Lithuanian music at the time; banned from being performed after a closed audition, it did not receive its public premiere until 12 years later). The quartet, full of aleatoric and sonoristic moments, was also not received favourably – one of our prominent musicians (and now an avid promoter of Kutavičius’ music) said of it at the time: “You can only play this kind of music with firewood – why torture the instruments?” The composer later said: “I will not go back to this kind of horrible avant-gardism again.” This is the only piece by Kutavičius that was written solely for string quartet, without other performers – later he needed them constantly, either for additional lines of counterpoint in the music, for different timbral colours, or for presenting the poetic text.

On the Shore (based on ascetically idyllic poems by Jonas Mekas, a New York-based filmmaker and writer, 1972) is a work of quite different colours, and one can detect here, as it were, the beginnings of his future minimalist style. The work poses different challenges to the performers: the aleatoric notation of the rhythm demands that the rhythm is not mechanical – but at the same time it should not stray too far, so as not to disrupt the flow of harmony. We cannot ask the composer about this now, but we can assume that this is the first recording of this work that sounds as he imagined it to sound.

String Quartet No. 2 Anno cum tettigonia (A Year with the Grasshopper, 1980) is a true classic of Lithuanian repetitive minimalism (together with his oratorio Last Pagan Rites, composed two years earlier), and the real Lithuanian “The Seasons” (here we can also recall his cycle of oratorios just so titled The Seasons, completed in 2008, based on the poem by Kristijonas Donelaitis). The composer did not mention it, but it can be assumed that the work begins with “Spring” and ends with “Winter” (just like the above mentioned cycle of oratorios – or the magnum opuses by Antonio Vivaldi and Joseph Haydn, for that matter). The 365 bars of the work symbolise the days, the bell-ringing inserts the months, and the sustained, later sopped organ tones (roughly) the seasons. The composer claims to have dreamed this idea and immediately rushed to write it down so as not to forget it. It is also the best illustration of what he said he was trying to achieve in his work: “You have to startle a man, ‘kill’ him with sound, so that he comes out staggering...” The work was performed (and previously recorded) with synth organ and bells in the backing track. This recording is the first with real instruments accompanying the quartet.

In Clocks of the Past (1977), Kutavičius seems to be returning to his earlier modernism, with serial and sonoristic techniques. It is clear that the composer has always been interested in the theme of the passage of time – here it’s possible to recall his vocal symphony Epitaphium temporum pereunti (Epitaph for Passing Time, 1998). The two movements of the work – Solar Clock and Sand Clock were thematically extended later by Clocks of the Past II for large ensemble (2000), with Floral Clock and Stellar Clock.

Towards the end of his career, the composer's music became simpler and more thinned out. This can be heard in the final pieces on the album, written in 2013. Agni (The One, Fivefold) reflects another of the composer’s thematic interests, the theme of fire (here you can also recall his opera-ballet Ignis et fides (Fire and Faith), 2003). In the last part of the work, the performers recite and sing the word “fire” in five languages – Sanskrit, Polish, English, Latin, and Lithuanian. The composer again needed additional musical lines and timbral colours: for the sake of ease of performance, he had written a part for synthesiser, changing the timbres of the drum, flute and bells over the three movements. The recording of this composition is also first with real instruments accompanying the quartet.

My Dear Old Mother is an arrangement of a folk song from the seaside region of Lithuania Minor (from the collection of Ludwig Rhesa). The song is full of sadness which is both gentle and stinging: a daughter gently reproaches her mother (who, for some reason, no longer seems to exist in this world) for having raised her so lovingly, and for having so unlovingly given her away to an unloved soldier.

With this album, the quartet continues a series of CD releases of music by Lithuanian composers, which previously included the String Quartets by Osvaldas Balakauskas and Music for String Quartet by Onutė Narbutaitė.