Includes unlimited streaming of The Small Spectacle
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 7 days
€10EURor more
about
The CD is entitled after the composition 'Mažasis spektaklis' (The Small Spectacle, 1975) which was set to the previously unpublished poems by Sigitas Geda. In the selected texts, the poet uses the imagery of primeval nature to convey archetypes hidden in the unconscious, the passing of time, glimpses of happiness, and unexpected illuminations. The deep, though incomplete, spontaneous poems during the 'performance' are read in an unusual manner: the rhythm of the words is not syllabic, but is created by the composer. The intonations are also divergent from customary speech; they are musical, abstract, and modern. Just as the poet has done with the words, the composer also lays out the sounds spatially, allowing them to rise, reach intensity, and decay.
The spectacle for one actress is not a performance full of special effects. It is a restrained movement akin to Chinese or Japanese theatre, wherein tiny changes and rests are important. Though, where does it take place? Perhaps the actress Nijolė Gelžinytė reads the lines while sitting at the edge of a lake, standing under a tree, lying in a field of grass, or perhaps she is just an observer and the performance is occurring around her?
Perhaps the musical theater of Kutavičius arises from the extraordinary importance and abundance of audible sensations in his life. It is his belief that a composition is successful and its performance is sufficiently suggestive only when the intended message is conveyed without any special theatrical devices, but by sound alone. We have observed the composer listening to his music during a rehearsal — eyes closed, hands covering his face. This mode of listening clearly demonstrates that the conceived performance takes place in the imagination and not on the stage. After the final notes have died away, the composer sits still and then opens his eyes. He has said: 'A musical composition is good when, for a few seconds after the conclusion, you still feel that you have experienced something unusual, you can still hear it resonate and understand its essence. If you do not, it means the composition is lacking, its form is imperfect'.
Austė Nakienė
credits
from The Small Spectacle,
released December 31, 2011
Voice - Nijolė Gelžinytė
Violins - Eugenijus Urbonas, Gediminas Dalinkevičius
Piano duo - Liuda & Kęstutis Grybauskai
Recording engineer - Vytautas Bičiūnas
Stunning electroacoustic songs where an intricate latticework of hammered dulcimer and billowy synths mirror an insect’s metamorphosis. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 2, 2022
A work of beautiful, pointillist guitar from Martyn Heyne, the moving songs on “Electric Intervals” are made of tiny pinpricks of sound. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 11, 2017