Content: Žibuoklė Martinaitytė Saudade Artists: Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra Giedre Šlekyte, conductor Gabrielius Alekna, piano Genres: Contemporary Orchestral Features: Sleeve notes in English |
Format: CD Released: February 2021 Catalogue No.: ODE 1386-2 EAN/UPC Code: 0761195138625 |
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Ondine’s releases on Baltic composers continue with a new exciting release featuring recent orchestral compositions by New York-based Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973) composed within a span of six years performed by Lithuanian orchestras conducted by the young talented Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Šlekytė and pianist Gabrielius Alekna as soloist.
Martinaitytė was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. Among her output are impressive orchestral compositions with evocative titles and beautiful orchestral textures with precision to detail. The most recent of the works, Saudade (2019) symbolizes the stratum of multiple yearnings: sadness for missing and happiness for experiencing the past. Millefleur (2018) is a work that the composer has described as “acoustic hedonism, a search for acoustic pleasures”. Martinaitytė’s Chiaroscuro trilogy (2017) is a 3-movement work for piano and strings, reflecting the very essence of our existence; the various grades of darkness and light. Horizons (2013) was written in New York and Lithuania and was inspired by two movies, Cloud Atlas and The Hours as well as Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler. In this work the listener travels through one story to another.
The winner of the second prize at the 2005 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna, pianist Gabrielius Alekna has appeared as a soloist in Vienna’s Musikverein and has also been a featured soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Amsterdam and Adelphi Symphony Orchestras in New York, Wartburg Community Symphony in Iowa, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey, and with the Belarus State Symphony Orchestra in Minsk, while in his native country the pianist appears regularly with major orchestras including the National Symphony, the State Symphony, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestras, the Christopher Chamber, and the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestras. In 2019, Alekna joined piano faculty at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.
Conductor Giedrė Šlekytė began her musical education at the National Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis Art School in Vilnius. She went on to study conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, the Academy of Music and Theatre in Leipzig and the Zurich University of Arts. Internationally sought after as a guest conductor, Giedrė Šlekytė has already worked with some of the finest European orchestra, including the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bruckner Orchester Linz, Staatskapelle Dresden, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, to name a few. Prize winner of the International Malko Competition for Young Conductor" in Copenhagen she also received the 2nd prize at the International Conducting Competition Solon Michaelides in 2013 in Cyprus (1st prize not awarded). In March 2015, she was nominated for the Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award and in 2018 as "Newcomer of the year" at the International Opera Awards.
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