Onutė Narbutaitė, one of Lithuania’s most prominent contemporary composers, was born in Vilnius, in 1956. The oratorio 'Centones meae urbi' (Patchwork for My City) recorded on this CD earned the composer the title of Lithuanian National Laureate in 1997.

'How to enclose within the frame of an "opus" the freedom of those sounds which emerge, and then recede? — the composer asks. — I look for harmony between expression and tranquility, between spontaneity and asceticism. And not only musical notes, but also regarding creativity and life, and life and words'.

Narbutaitė's works are hypnotic in their disciplined subtle construction and thinking, and in their natural, at times unexpected synthesis of musical flow. Narbutaitė's music is an exceptional and impressive phenomenon in our culture: uniting, touching, somehow uniquely safeguarding (perhaps specifically femininely) the fragile moments of existence — writes literary critic Viktorija Daujotytė. — It is both traditional (in a broad sense), and modern. Like every great creator.

The text of the oratorio is significant and impressive in its right, and testifies to the author's rich imagination and subtle sense of the spirit of Vilnius. Her literary taste and careful selection enabled her to encompass that which is not easily incorporated, into one composition. The words, performed in Lithuanian, Polish, Latin, Yiddish, and other languages, extend the borders of the capital of Lithuania as a spiritual centre, and remind us that it was, and continues to be, a city of Europe. As the word becomes music, music becomes the word; together they create the unique atmosphere of a Vilnius stretching out through time — where the past and the present become a uniform space.

The content of the oratorio is grouped into four parts — the seasons of the year. This cycle of nature is framed within 'The Opening' and 'The Closing' and 'The Poet's Return' and 'The Poet's Farewell' (by Czestaw Milosz). Here the poet becomes a concrete participant commenting on the events, and thereby emphasizing the theatrics of the oratorio.

The titles of the four parts were determined by the chosen texts, historical events, seasons of the year, and epochal associations. The elegiac mood of All Saints is characteristic of autumn, and especially of Romanticism; part one revolves around a 'romance' based on verse by Adam Mickiewicz. The Renaissance and Baroque epochs — when Vilnius blossomed — are springlike. And spring is the time of a procession to the town of Trakai, described by Mathias Casimirus Sarbievius in 1622. The procession made its way through Paneriai, which will become the site of tragedy several hundred years later. Summertime is thus dedicated to the commemoration of the Jewish Vilnius.

The first part, 'Autumn', is especially mystical. Examples of artistically transformed early church hymns and salon music, and pages of an aleatoric based score (which restores us to the present), emerge like floating cinematic frames. 'Winter' is created in Narbutaite's characteristically stealthy and fragile brushlike strokes. The colours of penetrating string flageolets and instrumentally hallooing choral sounds render not only the seasons of the year, but an image of numbing eternity and oblivion. And thus ever more alive (bugles blaring and drums rolling) rings the joyful and festive 'Royal Welcome' at the beginning of 'Spring'. Then follows the brightest part 'Spring at Lukiškės' — the culmination of the oratorio — where whistles and the voices of the vocalists quiver in the air like the singing of birds. Which is interrupted by the singing of the Procession in Lithuanian and Latin.

'Summer' defines the composer as an artist of the 20th century, proficient in the musical language of her time, and able to sensitively ascribe meaning to the tragically silenced sound of the city. Here, with the falling of rocks, emerge the deepest layers of the oratorio. They speak in the lowest register — a bass recitation unfurling as if from the depths the lament of the prophet Jeremiah from the Old Testament. The polyphonic adjunct of a choir, and a soloist reciting lines by Czeslaw Milosz about several century old publications and manuscripts in Latin, Cyrillic, and Hebrew letters, again extends the space of time to our present day. The bells tolling at the end of the oratorio ap ear strange and unique — church — like, glorifying, and symbolic. As if the soul of the itself had spoken.

'Centones meae urbi' was first performed at the conclusion of the Week of Baroque, on gust 9, 1997, in the Church of St. Catherine in Vilnius. The splendour of the Baroque architecture, still visible beneath the devastating tread of time and people, not only gave e oratorio a unique and appropriately spiritual background, it strengthened and complemented its theatrical attributes. The splendid acoustics contributed a magnificent Baroque resonance which revealed the inexhaustible levels of the mystery of Vilnius.

Audronė Žiūraitytė