Of the four portrait discs i’ve been spending time with lately, the most successful overall is Aletheia, a new album of choral works by Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, performed by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava.
The title work is one of the growing number of contemporary pieces directly or indirectly responding to Putin’s war against Ukraine. Contemplating the notion of national identity (always a hot topic in the Baltic states), Martinaitytė recalled the ‘singing revolution‘ that contributed to the overthrow of Russian occupation, concluding that “the only instrument people have even in situations of destruction, in the midst of the war, is their VOICE”. The work is a broad, wordless canvas, abstract but heartfelt, in which the choir passes through phases that hint not only at peace and turmoil, but also at aspects of folk music and ritual. In particular its central passage, a sequence of united cries and calls, powerful yet imbued with keening and desparation, is especially poignant, all the more so as it dissolves quickly into a mess of noise.
It’s to Aletheia‘s considerable advantage that Martinaitytė avoids using a text. This is music that goes beyond words, music about the voice, and thereby music about people. Listening to it one becomes more than usually aware of being in the company of a large group of individuals, switched on to their human vocality and not just to the familiar engagement with a conventional work of art. Art it is, though, and while warmth suffuses the texture in its closing minutes, it’s hard to interpret it as anything more positive than the kind of grim determination that comes from absolute unity in the face of something sinister.
Words, in fact, are entirely absent from all four pieces on this album. That’s all the more obvious in Chant des Voyelles (Incantation of Vowels), which is arguably the most minimal of them. It again conjures up an atmosphere of ritual, taking inspiration from an eponymous sculpture by Jacques Lipchitz featuring an Egyptian prayer comprised only of vowels, designed to “subdue the forces of nature”. Something of a sibling to Aletheia, then, though the assertiveness of that work is here replaced with a musical language that, if not exactly passive, has a neutrality suggesting the act of vocalisation itself is sufficient. Perhaps that’s why it’s the weak point of the album, certainly feeling overlong at nearly 17 minutes (the longest of the four) with only small ripples and a closing sequence of surges to enliven its smooth, basic mode, focusing on a drifting, largely diatonic pitch cloud. It’s certainly not empty music, though it does skirt much too closely to the creativity vacuum of the likes of Eric Whitacre et al. for comfort.
The final two works are by far the strongest. Ululations absolutely lives up to its name, and despite being so much more overtly abstract, if anything seems to contain more magic-invoking potential than the previous two pieces. There’s something simultaneously ravishing and unsettling about the ebb and flow of the ever-united voices (unity, also a Baltic trait, is another feature running throughout the album). Its tremulous texture expands in richness only to collapse, gorgeously, into a network of low register rhythmic patterns. Building to a beautiful sustained sequence of radiance, it agan has the focused intensity of an elaborate rite yet also the air of a purely artistic, creative act. There’s that duality again: alluding to things tangible and emotive while retaining an unwavering emphasis on line, shape, texture, overlap, juxtaposition. It’s masterly in its simultaneous strangeness and immediacy; we marvel as outsiders while feeling compelled to join in and become part of its throng.
The other highlight of this portrait disc is The Blue of Distance, a 13-minute focusing of the choir into something initially primordial. A low cluster is the starting point for nascent shapes and gestures, again the product of a tight, communal act, in which every voice has precisely the same purpose as the rest. It becomes something half-clear, both in terms of harmonic identity as well as the possibility – an emergent property of its diverse vocal shapes – of words and phrases. Yet it’s as if Martinaitytė had turned the voices into a complex fluid, pouring the resultant shapes back into the mix where they blend and cause new configurations to emerge, individual voices occasionally rising out to form swooping semblances of melody. The effect is mesmerising, briefly coalescing later into an exquisite gentle chord and even, beyond this, a modest glowing climax, yet always giving the impression of carefulness in its ongoing, contemplative evolution.
Released in November last year, Aletheia is available on CD and download.
An excellent write-up about a great album, which I included here: https://anearful.substack.com/p/best-of-2024-classical