Ondine’s releases of Baltic composers continue with a new exciting release featuring recent orchestral compositions by New York-based Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė (b. 1973) composed within a span of six years performed by Lithuanian orchestras conducted by the young talented Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Šlekytė and with pianist Gabrielius Alekna as soloist.

Martinaitytė was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020. Among her output are impressive orchestral compositions with evocative titles and beautiful orchestral textures with precision to detail. The most recent of the works, Saudade (2019) symbolizes the stratum of multiple yearnings: sadness for missing and happiness for experiencing the past. Millefleur (2018) is a work that the composer has described as “acoustic hedonism,a search for acoustic pleasures”. Martinaitytės’ Chiaroscuro Trilogy (2017) is a three-movement work for piano and strings, reflecting the very essence of our existence; the various grades of darkness and light. Horizons (2013) was written in New York and Lithuania and was inspired by two movies, Cloud Atlas and The Hours as well as Italo Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler. In this work the listener travels through one story to another.

The winner of the second prize at the 2005 International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna, pianist Gabrielius Alekna has appeared as a soloist in Vienna’s Musikverein and has also been a featured soloist with the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Amsterdam and Adelphi Symphony Orchestras in New York, Wartburg Community Symphony in Iowa, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra in Ankara, Turkey, and with the Belarus State Symphony Orchestra in Minsk, while in his native country the pianist appears regularly with major orchestras including the National Symphony, the State Symphony, Kaunas City Symphony Orchestras, the Christopher Chamber, and the Lithuanian Chamber orchestras. In 2019, Alekna joined piano faculty at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.