Dracula

Performers:

Cello ensemble "cello club" Povilas Jacunskas, Domas Jakštas, Arnas Kmieliauskas, Evaldas Petkus, Povilas Paukštė, Šarūnas Pozniakovas, Viktor Rekalo, Rokas Vaitkevičius INDRĖ BAIKŠTYTĖ (piano)

Program: PHILIP GLASS – "Dracula" Suite "Dracula" "Journey to the Inn" "The Inn" "Carriage Without a Driver" "Dr. Van Helsing and Dracula" "In the Theater" "Seward Sanatorium" "Mina on the Terrace" "Mina's Bedroom / The Abbey" "The End of Dracula" "Epilogue" JUSTĖ JANULYTĖ – "Unanime" RYTIS MAŽULIS – "Circulatio"

A traditional autumn event – the contemporary music festival "Iš Arti" presents six events from November 10th to 21st, revealing the field of contemporary music – from reflections on modernist tradition to new stage forms, which will allow listeners to experience the diverse world of contemporary music.

The axis of the festival's opening concert on November 17th is American composer Philip Glass's "Dracula" suite, arranged for cello octet and piano.

In this concert, "Cello Club" will perform in this lineup for the first time – the ensemble, having grown into an octet, will perform together with pianist Indrė Baikštytė. This version for cello octet and piano was created by Ph. Glass's long-time collaborator, pianist and conductor Michael Riesman. The piece creates a slow, hypnotic sound field – a pulsating, layered structure, with the dramaturgy developing through slowly changing, varied repetitions.

The work was born at the end of the 20th century, when Universal Pictures invited Ph. Glass to create a new soundtrack for Tod Browning's classic 1931 film "Dracula". With almost no music in the original version of the film, the composer chose the instrumentation of a string quartet – a chamber ensemble that allows for the creation of both an intimate and tense emotional field, avoiding direct genre clichés. This music was first performed in collaboration with the legendary ensemble "Kronos Quartet".

Alongside Ph. Glass's music, the program will feature works by Lithuanian composers Justė Janulytė and Rytis Mažulis – two different compositions related to the tradition of minimalism. In J. Janulytė's work "Unanime", the cello octet is perceived as a single organism – a coherent, breathing sonic body in which individual lines dissolve into a common timbral flow. Meanwhile, R. Mažulis's "Circulatio" is based on the principle of cyclical movement – repetitions, rotation, and a precisely organized progression that takes on a living, pulsating form during the performance. Both works in their own way extend the same idea of music as a constantly changing system developing in the flow of time.