ONUTĖ NARBUTAITĖ (b.1956): La barca, no yesterday, no tomorrow for Mezzo-Soprano, Tenor amd Orchestra, riverbank - river - symphony.

Description: In her broadly conceived, exquisitely detailed, sumptuously sonorous large-scale works like these and the huge Three Symphonies of the Mother of God (05M084), Narbutaitė succeeds in writing music vivid in imagery that sounds far more 'Romantic' in spirit and expression than its actual vocabulary suggests. La barca, a large-scale tone poem from 2005, explores the many ideas and connotations of boats, ships and nautical imagery; embarking on a journey to the unknown, a symbol of hope or longing in mythology, sinister nocturnal passages through the gloomy canals of Venice. The composer avoids themes, though brief tonal sequences sometimes emerge from the sonorous flows of texture to suggest archetypally resonant images. The fourth symphony, with its images of the inexorable passage of a river, but also of time and memory, is somewhat related to the slightly earlier work, by the composer's own admission; in both works a tonal-romantic 'object' will loom out of the mists and recede just as unexpectedly. The result is music of impressive power and great emotional impact. No Yesterday, No Tomorrow' is an episode adapted from Narbutaitė's opera Cornet (after Rilke) in lieu of a requested suite. The work's theme of hopeless love in the oppressive atmosphere of war elicits the most neo-romantic music on this disc. Lithuanian, French, German-English texts. Jovita Vaškevičiūte (mezzo), Tomas Pavilionis (tenor), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra; Christopher Lyndon-Gee.