VYTAUTAS BACEVICIUS (1905-1970): Poème électrique, Op. 16, Piano Concerto No. 1 "Sur les thèmes lituaniens", Op. 12, Symphony No. 2 "Della Guerra", Op. 32, Symphony No. 6 "Cosmique", Op. 66, Graphique, Op. 68.
Catalogue Number: 06I008
Label: Toccata Classics
Reference: TOCC 0049
Format: CD
Price: $18.98
Description: This Lithuanian composer (brother of the Polish violinist/composer Grazyna Bacewicz - just going to show you how intertwined Poland and Lithuania still are, six centuries after their empire) stayed close to avant-garde circles through much of his career, which is fairly summarized by these compositions which date from 1929 to 1964. The concerto is the earliest, a single-movement work of 14 minutes whose Lithuanian thematic material is buried in a steamy, late-Scriabinesque harmonic atmosphere, while the Poème is a five-minute exercise in machine music (think Pacific 231 or, of course, Iron Foundry) from three years later. Coming from 1940, in exile in the U.S., Bacevicius' war symphony comes with a program: the music describes bombs exploding in Warsaw, lamenting parents and children, funeral processions, the Germans attacking France. This is in a relatively conservative musical language, as befits an exile trying to fit into a musically conservative country. But, by 1960 (the Cosmique, a single-movement 13-minute work), he's back into the avant-garde, deriving the whole piece from an initial atonal (but not dodecaphonic) shape. The piece is violent and expressive, as is, to a slightly lesser extent, Graphique, which is an exercise in timbral composition which was sketched out graphically before being instrumented conventionally (it sounds like a somewhat more polite Xenakis from the same period). Aidas Puodziukas (piano), Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra; Vytautas Lukocius, Martynas Staskus.