Vytautas Bacevičius - Piano Music, Vol. 3 (Gabrielius Alekna)

Information

Composer: Vytautas Bacevičius

1. Poème contemplation, Op. 5
2. Poème mystique, Op. 6
3. Vision, Op. 30
4. 3 Moments, Op. 41: No. 1, Hope
5. 3 Moments, Op. 41: No. 2, Elevation
6. 3 Moments, Op. 41: No. 3, Splendour
7. Poème No. 5, Op. 42
8. Piano Suite No. 1, Op. 47: I. Moderato pathètique
9. Piano Suite No. 1, Op. 47: II. Allegro energico
10. Piano Suite No. 1, Op. 47: III. Moderato scherzando (quasi allegretto)
11. Piano Suite No. 1, Op. 47: IV. Lento bizzaramente
12. Piano Suite No. 1, Op. 47: V. Allegretto leggieramente (quasi moderato)
13. Chanson triste, Op. 56
14. Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60: I. Allegretto
15. Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60: II. Allegro moderato
16. Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60: III. Lento
17. Piano Suite No. 3, Op. 60: IV. Presto
18. Poème cosmique, Op. 65

Gabrielius Alekna, piano

Date: 2025

Label: Toccata

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Description

This Toccata Classics series was never intended to present the ‘complete piano works’ of Vytautas Bacevičius. Rather, for each of the three volumes, I have selected compositions that demonstrate the enormous variety of his piano-writing, with compositions representing different periods, genres, styles and lengths. I have also prioritised including first recordings, an objective increasingly difficult to achieve, given the growing interest of other pianists in performing and recording Bacevičius’ music. I hope that this approach has allowed each volume to offer a colourful and well-balanced picture of Bacevičius’ music, in this way sharing with the listeners my own sense of discovery.

Vytautas Bacevičius was the first (and for several decades the only) Lithuanian instrumental soloist to achieve international recognition. As he included his own compositions in all his solo programmes and frequently toured with his Piano Concerto No. 1 (Sur les thèmes lithuaniens), he was the face of Lithuanian music in the eyes of European audiences in the 1930s. The artistry of his performances and the extent of his concert activities earned him a fine reputation, confirmed by his invitation to serve on a jury at the International Eugène Ysaÿe Piano Competition in Brussels in 1938, alongside such luminaries as François Casadesus, Walter Gieseking, Arthur Rubinstein, Emil Sauer and Leopold Stokowski. Even though he received a traditional conservatoire training in his native Łódź and was proud of being a ‘third generation Chopin pupil’ through his Parisian piano studies with Santiago Riéra, it was Bacevičius’ overarching concern with modernity that made his recital programmes distinctive. They stood out, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s, as decidedly forward-looking, focusing on such twentieth-century composers as Albéniz, Debussy, Falla, Prokofiev, Ravel, Szymanowski, Skryabin and Tcherepnin. Bacevičius made only one recording, an LP produced in the home of a friend with no access to editing capabilities, and long after he had withdrawn from performing activities. As such, it is not a fair representation of his pianistic style. Instead, contemporary reviews of his concert performances remain the main source for assessing the manner and style of his playing. Besides noting the originality of his programmes, reviewers seemed to agree on several other points. Most of them stressed strong technique, bold temperament and rhythmic precision: Bacevičius ‘has technique to spare and fingers of steel’; ‘a really perfect technique, a strong expression, a great artistic temperament – [Bacevičius] gave proof of all the qualities that make a great pianist’; ‘Bacevičius’ interpretations breathe with powerful, hypnotising dynamism, and expressiveness of extraordinary force’. Many also pointed out his especially convincing interpretations of contemporary music, as illustrated in a response from the French critic Joseph Baruzi: ‘compositions of the so-called modernists, the pianist played with full abandon, revealing the full power of his talent’.

While studying, performing and recording Bacevičius’ piano music, I am constantly reminded of his impeccable training and that formidable technique. Most of his works are complex and challenging to learn and perform, though at the same time being idiomatic and well laid out for the hands. One of the crucial clues to how Bacevičius intended his compositions to sound is his occasional metronome indications. They are surprisingly fast, even for supposedly slow or moderately paced sections. To me, that indicates the mercurial, constantly shifting and sparkling sound he was aiming at, which fittingly reflects his neurotic, restless and contradictory personality.

The group of piano compositions entitled Poèmes occupy a special place in his output: along with his Mots, they are his most original compositions. He returned to the genre throughout his creative life and also programmed all of them in his public recitals. (Besides the seven for piano, one of which has a missing ending, he wrote one for organ and one, unfinished, for orchestra.) With the first two, Poème contemplation, Op. 5, and Poème mystique, Op. 6, Bacevičius announced his presence to Kaunas, Lithuania – his newly adopted homeland – after moving there in 1926 from his native Łódź, in Poland. The musical language of these pieces (and of the Poème astral, Op. 7) points clearly to the influence of Alexander Skryabin. Though the Theosophy-inflected titles of these works (not otherwise explained by the composer) are possibly signs of an overall influence of a Skryabinesque aesthetic outlook, these seeds evolved during Bacevičius’ last creative decade into his firmly held and passionately argued ideas of ‘cosmic music’. Both Poèmes were published by the Mercury Music Corporation in New York in 1967.

The Poème contemplation, Op. 5 (1926), is dedicated to the composer’s brother Kęstutis (Kiejstut in Polish). In a letter to the musicologist Milda Kazakevičienė, Bacevičius acknowledged Skryabin’s influence and put the two poems in the group of ‘pure atonalism’, within his period of ‘atonal expressionism’. To be sure, it’s not pure atonality. In her work attempting to define subtle types and degrees of tonality lying between the tonal and the atonal in Bacevičius’ work, the musicologist Eglė Gudžinskaitė considers Poème contemplation an example of ‘ambivalent’ or ‘changeable’ tonality. In his letter to Kazakevičienė, Bacevičius pointed out that the Poème contemplation ‘has complex and most interesting rhythms’, and constant changes of time-signature ‘as in Pierre Boulez’. It is indeed filled with intricate rhythms superimposed upon one another, capriciously wrought melodic gestures, double trills, cascades of delicate downward-pointing arpeggios and even single-note tremolos. It is through-composed with some short recapitulatory passages.

The Poème mystique, Op. 6 (1926), is dedicated to the composer’s sister Wanda. Compared with the Poème contemplation, the melodic gestures here are longer and more fully developed and the musical flow more consciously structured, with some sections returning in the same or varied form. Dynamics are dramatised, with some sonorous chordal tremolos. In a Skryabinesque vein, many harmonic progressions are built around dominant-seventh chords with added notes. The layering of textures results in notation that is often expanded to three and even four staves.

Vision, Op. 30 (1937), dedicated to his sister Grażyna and published in 1967 by the Mercury Music Corporation, is the shortest stand-alone piece on this album. Harmonies are continuously in flux in smooth chromatic progressions, but the music studiously avoids giving any impression of a tonal centre. In his letter to Kazakevičienė, Bacevičius described the musical language of Vision and some other works as ‘synthetic style’, by which he meant ‘the synthesis of various styles – classic-romantic, impressionist and expressionist-atonal – that was quite successfully used by Alban Berg in his opera Wozzeck’. A dense beginning, Andante – the first of three sections – soon yields to a dark ostinato rhythmic figure, which leads, lower and lower, into the deepest register of the piano. The Skryabinesque volante middle section – Più mosso – follows with the constantly rising and pulsating left-hand part feeding the right-hand chromatic shifts from parallel fourths to thirds to tritones as the music reaches a short climax of fortissimo double octaves. After a return to the dark Andante ostinato figures, they are transformed into disquieting dotted rhythms, reiterated as music sinks even deeper until the final dissonance melts away at ppp.

The Three Moments, Op. 41 (1946), were published in 2006, in my edition; this is their first recording. Compared to earlier pieces from the 1920s and 1930s, this set exemplifies a new era and sensibility, down to its English titles. It is from what Bacevičius saw as a Neo-Classical and Neo-Romantic period of ‘compromise’, as he simplified his musical language in an attempt to conform to conservative American tastes, in his hope of being understood and appreciated by the American public. The three pieces are in lyrical mould, with no percussiveness, with relatively straightforward texture and few changes of metre. Charming harmonic sequences recall Franck or Poulenc, in places even approaching Gershwin. Even the tempo markings suggest the lighter, less serious character of the set: Allegretto delicatamente (quasi Andantino) for ‘Hope’, Allegretto (quasi Allegro) for ‘Elevation’ and Moderato sostenuto – Allegro assai sensibilmente for ‘Splendour’. In this set, Bacevičius extensively uses his signature rearrangement/collage/mosaic technique, whereby short, usually one- or two-bar fragments reappear in different configurations, in either the same or transposed form. It is likely that the inspiration for this kind of constructivism came from his longtime admiration for abstract art. The first, ‘Hope’, opens with a lilting waltz-like a section in 6/8, followed by a bouncy chordal scherzando b section in 2/4, and then a modified a section, with collage/mosaic technique used throughout. No. 2, ‘Elevation’, is in a-a¹ form, with the a¹ section largely a shattered and rearranged mosaic of the a section. Ubiquitous short slurs fill the music with dance-like hops and swings. Even the wide dynamic range, pianissimo to fortissimo, fails to disturb the sunny and asymmetrically graceful character of the piece. The closing ‘Splendour’ starts and ends with an a section in the ‘three-hand’ texture exploited heavily by Romantic composers – in this case, a double-note tremolo middle layer, played mostly by the right hand, flanked with a bass line and a long soprano cantilena (rare for Bacevičius) – requiring frequent hand-crossings. The more dance-like b section, which is itself in a-b-a form, is in triple time but uses hemiola so consistently that it sounds more like it is in 2/4. After the rearranged return of the ‘Romantic’ tremolo a section, an ecstatic coda ends the piece splendidly indeed.

Poème No. 5, Op. 42 (1946), was published for the first time in 2002 by the Lithuanian Music Information Centre, in an edition by Lina Navickaitė. More than many other Bacevičius works, this one seems to have been written as a virtuoso concert piece intended to showcase his compositional and pianistic gifts, at a time when he still had hopes for a successful concert career in America. And indeed, he performed Poème No. 5 on a WNYC radio broadcast in 1947 and then at one of his Carnegie Hall recitals the following year. The piece displays a wide range of characters, from fragile and hesitant pianissimo syncopations to a muscular military march. It seems to be in the style that Bacevičius described as ‘new modernism’ – characterised by angular ‘primitivistic’ rhythms and proliferation of accents, which he attributed to the influences of Prokofiev and Stravinsky. This rhythmic energy is matched by rich, biting harmonies using seconds and fourths. It is one of his first pieces to widely employ repeated-note figures, something he was to grow fond of using.

The genre of the suite, most readily associated with Baroque dance, was first resurrected by Adolf Jensen (1837–79), whose Deutsche Suite, Op. 36, published in Berlin in 1869, re-introduced the spirit of the Baroque into German music. Later composers as varied in their aesthetic outlooks as Stravinsky and Schoenberg adopted it, too, since it allowed them to experiment with the grouping of short musical forms without expectation of their deep integration. This album includes two of Bacevičius’ three suites for piano. There is no record of his performing Suite No. 1, Op. 47 (1949), which was published only in 2006, in my edition. Its individual movements are some of the simplest in his output: all of them feature recapitulatory two- or three-part form, with numerous uses of mosaic/collage technique. The Suite, an example of his Neo-Classical, ‘compromise’ style, nevertheless teems with imaginative, inventive textures and harmonic colours, delightfully conveying a range of moods, from pathos (I. Moderato pathétique) via the feverish energy of repeated notes (II. Allegro energico) to humour (an especially charming III. Moderato scherzando (quasi Allegretto)), from puzzlingly mysterious (IV. Lento bizzarramente), to an elegant ‘spinning song’ (V. Allegretto leggieramente (quasi Moderato)).

As with the First Suite, there is no record of Bacevičius having performed his Chanson triste (Liūdna daina in Lithuanian), Op. 56 (1954), published in my edition in 2006. True to its title, the piece begins Andante dolore, dominated by low, dark chords strung together by double-dotted melodic rhythm. After some rise and fall through staccato semiquavers (sixteenths) and then pleading triplets, a highly contrasting Moderato energico section brings a jolt of energy, intensified even more by short bursts of leaping più mosso triplet passages. After a new element is presented in the original Andante tempo, the contrasting Moderato energico section resumes, with some of its elements repeated and transposed. The Andante dolore then returns, in a rearranged order. The formal structure of the piece – still part of the period of ‘compromise’ – is a simple but creative a-b-c-d-c-c¹-b-a-d.

Bacevičius’ Suite No. 3, Op. 60 (1956) – I. Allegretto, II. Allegro moderato, III. Lento, IV. Presto – survived as proofs of an engraved edition from 1969; it was finally published in 2024 by the Lithuanian Music Information Centre. Here, too, there is no record of Bacevičius having performed it. It is a transitional work, showing him moving away from the music of ‘compromise’ towards his highly original late style. Not unlike in his first Suite, he employs mosaic-like (re)organisation of material within recapitulatory-like forms. The harmonies here, however, have been pruned of traditional third-based chords and rely instead on sonorities built out of seconds, fourths, tritones and sevenths. Textures become ‘scattered’, almost pointillistically acrobatic, aerated to a degree of transparency where melody and harmony fuse into one. Its highlights include the breathless waltz-like episodes in the first-movement Allegretto and closing Presto, and the disconcerting ‘birdcall’ ostinatos of oscillating fourths in the third-movement Lento, which closes with a chordal sequence that evokes Messiaen.

The Poème cosmique, Op. 65 (1959), was published by the Mercury Music Corporation in 1967 and recorded by Bacevičius on an LP released by the Delta Recording Corporation two years later. With this work he picks up his Skryabin-inspired mystical thread of the early Poèmes, but now it is woven very consciously into what he called his ‘cosmic music’, the endeavour to which he would devote his remaining creative years. For him, ‘cosmic’ meant not the external but the inner cosmos of man as the source of all creativity, and ‘cosmic music’ sat at the forefront of musical progress. His late masterpieces – such as Graphique and Symphony No. 6, Cosmique, for orchestra, Piano Concerto No. 4, Symphonie concertante, or the Septième mot for two pianos – bear witness to these efforts. The sound of the Poème cosmique is the product of a sometimes uneasy but nonetheless compelling synthesis of his newly liberated, highly distinctive late style on one hand and his penchant for brilliant piano writing on the other. Although mosaic/collage technique is used within some sections, gone is recapitulatory form, with music always moving towards something new. In her study of tonality in Bacevičius, Gudžinskaitė maintains that the Poème cosmique falls into the category of ‘eliminated tonality’, whereby any tonal centre is only inferred but never established. The texture is transparent, with any dense chords appearing staccato and bursts of fortissimo framed by silences. The trills and chordal tremolos of the early Poèmes make a comeback here. Sensitivity to chordal interplays and rhythmic ingenuity in combining textural layers bring Messiaen to mind. Large parts of the piece unfold in two-part counterpoint, the melodic shapes interacting in ever-unpredictable ways. The last section Allegro assai sparkles with garlands of grace notes, repeated notes and staccato chords, its coda in Doppio movimento and fortissimo providing a more conventionally satisfying close to Bacevičius’ last Poème.

— Gabrielius Alekna

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Vytautas Bacevičius (9 September 1905 – 9 September 1970) was a Lithuanian composer, brother of Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. Educated in Łódź and at the Paris Conservatory under Nikolai Tcherepnin, he established a career as a composer, pianist and teacher in Lithuania, eventually heading the Lithuanian Section of the ISCM. Stranded in Argentina during World War II, he emigrated to the United States in 1940. Based in New York, he maintained active teaching studios and performed at Carnegie Hall. Known for his unique style and "cosmic music" theory, he drew creative inspiration from Scriabin, Jolivet and Varèse.

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Lithuanian pianist Gabrielius Alekna studied at the M.K. Čiurlionis Arts Gymnasium and the Lithuanian Academy of Music. He became the first Lithuanian to earn a doctoral degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied under Jerome Lowenthal. Alekna regularly performs as a soloist with prominent international ensembles, including the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and in major venues such as Carnegie Hall and the Musikverein. A strong advocate for modern Lithuanian music, his acclaimed recordings on labels like Naxos and Ondine showcase compositions by Vytautas Bacevičius and Žibuoklė Martinaitytė.

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