In her music, Raminta Šerkšnytė finds her own unique way to combine neoromantic idiom with certain elements of minimalist music, jazz and avant-garde. Compositions for large chamber ensembles and orchestras make a major part of her creative output, which is characterised by expressive and emotional intensity, as much as by vivid imagery. One can feel a broad spectrum of certain states of mind — kind of musical archetypes — emanating in Šerkšnytė's music: from meditative, nostalgic, melancholic moods to dramatic expression and outbursts of vital energy. Quite a few of her compositions may as well be described as colourful nature-inspired soundscapes, in which Šerkšnytė evokes spiritual reflection of her sensibilities.

The composer first attracted public and critical notice during her first years at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, as an undergraduate student of composition. From the very beginning her somewhat 'traditionally' wrought works betrayed an unmistakable trace of her artistic personality. Her major concerns then were to find individual solutions to the puzzles of musical form and to achieve command of the musical time flow (in order that the work would draw the listener's attention into the field of artistic suasion from the very first sounds and that every inconsistent detail would be purged from the otherwise dramatically consistent development); to form her own recognisable harmonic language (a sort of 'extended tonality' based on simultaneous combination of major and minor harmonies); and to fathom the secrets of instrumentation (in composer's words, her pursuit is similar to that of a watercolorist — to obtain as many different shades of sound colour as possible). The work, crowning her creative accomplishments during this period, is the symphonic fantasy 'Iceberg Symphony' (2000), flickering with myriad moods and colours.

The turning point came in 2002, with the 'Oriental Elegy' for string quartet. The listeners, who kept track of the composer's development from the very beginning of her career, wondered at the sudden change of style: instead of vivid neoromantic imagery pervading her earlier works, they heard complicated (though, perhaps, even more emotionally appealing) musical language, involving aleatory, microtones, clusters and extended string techniques. The repercussions of this change can be also felt in her later pieces (e.g. in 'Mirages' for string quartet, 2005); though in many of her recent works the composer found an ingenious and coherent way to combine both neoromantic and avant-garde tendencies of her work (e.g. in 'Vortex' for violin solo and large ensemble, 2004, and 'Almond Blossom' for chamber ensemble, 2006).

The composer admits that the Eastern aesthetics has become increasingly characteristic of her work since the 'Oriental Elegy' written at the beginning of the current decade. This may well explain some of the tendencies that have surfaced in her most recent works: recurrent dramatic collisions and 'subjective/emotional outbursts were gradually supplanted with more or less 'objective' contemplation of nature's sublimity and a person's inner self (as in the oratorio 'Songs of Sunset and Dawn' for four soloists, choir and symphony orchestra, 2007, and, to a certain extent, in the symphonic fantasy 'Mountains in the Mist', 2005). One way or another, it is hard to predict which way her next work will turn. Repetition and exploitation of 'tried and tested' models have never been her favourite methods of composing. By setting new goals with each new composition, Raminta Šerkšnytė remains both recognisable and unpredictable in her passion for creative discovery.

Linas Paulauskis