Baltic Times 10/03
October, 2003

Commissioned Works for the festival "Is Arti" (From up close)
By Alina Ramanauskiene

What is this "Is arti" Festival?
"Is" = from, "arti" = close, "is arti" = From up close.
Is it a holiday or is it a mundane occurrence in November?

Is it an annual account of labour intensive composing or a natural culmination of the efforts of those with a calling to create?
Most likely- as with hurried crop harvesting, it is a festival for the composers as much as for performers and the audience.

There is little time to show continued joy for the festival and little time to discuss it.
There is little time to rehearse, agonize over, and perfect the newly created works.
Such is our daily reality - chance and amusement is a more frequent guest on the stage than perfection.

Fragmentation wins over conceptualization and reverence.

Famous string players from Canada demonstrated fantastic technique and unbelievable ensemble playing and rhythmic discipline.

Meeting with the Penderecki Quartet

Famous and with credentials string players from Canada presented 20th century classical 'New Music' - Steve Reich's and George Crumb's compositions.

It is self-evident that these chrestomatic works (collection of works from other cultures), that we were able to hear live and not from recordings, excited every music-lover's heart.

However, time has changed perceptions:

Today S. Reich's "Different Trains" and G. Grumb's "Black Angels" no longer sounded so provocative. What sounded in the 70-80's as "unbelievably original and emotional works", now are understood as intellectual, and even boring technical games: aleatoric, most complicated rhythmic formulas, magnetic tapes, projected moving trains, glasses on the stage which were played, red candles… This is why Peter Hatch's and Piotr Grella Mozejko's works written recently reflect post-modern aesthetics.

Among the works performed by Penderecki this evening, the work Secret Garden, by P. Grella-Mozejko, a Polish composer, now living in Canada, was the only work composed without any electronic components. It was performed enchantingly and quietly from pianissimo to piano.

Even so, I would dare to submit, that the first evening's main highlight was not the music, but the amazing performance of these four musicians from Canada. From their entry on to the stage to the encore Happy Birthday the Penderecki Quartet demonstrated fantastic technique, unbelievable ensemble playing and rhythmic discipline. They gave rise to an altogether different interpretation of the music that was not the romantic interpretation that we're used to.

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