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Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis: The Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Nikolaus Lahusen
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis: The Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1
Genre: Classical
 
  •  Track Listings (29) - Disc #1

Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis - painter, composer, thinker and visionary - was born in 1875, in the southern Lithuanian town of Varena, near Vilnius. Beginning his artistic career as a composer, in his final years h...  more »

     
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All Artists: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Nikolaus Lahusen
Title: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis: The Complete Piano Music, Vol. 1
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: Celestial Harmonies
Release Date: 8/15/2000
Genre: Classical
Styles: Historical Periods, Modern, 20th, & 21st Century, Symphonies
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 013711318425

Synopsis

Album Description
Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis - painter, composer, thinker and visionary - was born in 1875, in the southern Lithuanian town of Varena, near Vilnius. Beginning his artistic career as a composer, in his final years he additionally devoted himself to the art of painting. Doubly talented and a visionary artistic figure of the years linking the late Romantic with the Modern Age, he was one of numerous creative innovators, among them Skryabin, Schoenberg and Ravel, all born in the same year. He was granted only ten years to exercise his extensive creative talents before his untimely death in 1911. Between 1899 and 1909 he produced 250 musical compositions, 150 of which were scored for solo piano, as well as 200 paintings and 80 drawings. Deep depression and exhaustion hindered him from being artistically productive thereafter.It is the piano compositions, in particular, which have secured him posthumous fame. Following the early lyrically romantic piano pieces, he turned towards a modern style replete with constructivistic detail. In his way he anticipated the melodic form of serial music, using ostinato tone progressions embedded in flickering chromatic atonal surfaces. After about 1908 his music became atonal, strictly contrapuntal and linear, less sensuous than that of Skryabin's.Later generations have seen the painter-composer Ciurlionis as an aesthetic revolutionary. Some art historians argue that his works, with their mystical approach to the natural world, are examples of abstract - or at least non-figural - paintings predating Kandinsky's own steps in that direction. A number of musicologists claim, on the other hand, that Ciurlionis used tone rows as a basis for musical composition even before Schoenberg.The French novelist Romain Rolland has perhaps found the most fitting words for the greatness and universality of this unique artist: "It is hard to describe how strongly I am moved by this remarkable art, which has not only enriched the world of painting but also widened our horizons in the area of polyphony and musical rhythm. Ciurlionis was the Christopher Columbus of a new intellectual continent."

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CD Reviews

Perfect
Darius Kucinskas | Lithuania | 01/10/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)

"Everybody in Lithuania plays Ciurlionis. And everybody in Lithuania can say you how to play Ciurlionis. But when I listened CD of German pianist Nikolaus Lahusen, I can say... nothing! Nobody before had played Ciurlionis so perfect and in so deep feeling of composer's nature like N. Lahusen. I can say that Ciurlionis waited for N.Lahusen like A.Skrjabin waited for Sofronicky or F.Chopin for A. Rubinstein... Of course, you know that Ciurlionis is the great painter. But you don't need to go to his exhibition in Paris (d'Orsay museum), you can simply sit down and listen for N.Lahusen's playing - you really will see true colors and will hear true sounds of great artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis!"