JUSTĖ JANULYTĖ

In 2017, commissioned by the Vilnius Festival, Justė Janulytė, a Lithuanian composer and recipient of the Lithuanian National Culture and Art Prize, composed Midnight Sun for cello and orchestra. “This composition explores the musical metaphors of the oxymoron hidden in the title and, in various forms of duality, creates a mystical atmosphere emanating an air of nigh on white nights characteristic of June in Lithuania, full of intangible tension and lyrical poetics. The multi-layered score consists of fractals of different dimensions, the largest of which is embodied by the solo cello. From it, as if reflections or echoes, all the other threads of the symphony orchestra’s strings emerge, thickening, intertwining and gradually prevailing over the sound source emitting them. The main logic of motion in the space of sounds here becomes the shape of a rotating circle, which connects and demagnetizes increasingly opposite poles and acts in parallel with the metamorphoses of the irreversible process. In this way, the musical score “amplifies” a two-sided perception of time, characteristic of ourselves, observing the cyclicality of our own and natural bodies in the flow of slow and only one-way transformations.”

Performers of the premiere of “Midnight Sun”: strings of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, soloist Italian cellist Mario Brunello, conductor Modestas Pitrėnas.