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Ciurlionis, you say? For the uninitiated in Lithuanian culture: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was the greatest composer the country produced, he was also one of the most important visual artists and a more than creditable writer. When Ciurlionis died in 1911, he left behind some 400 pieces of music and 300 paintings \u2013 and he was only thirty-five. The Limburg festival Vocallis, which took place on Friday, putted a spotlight on multi-talented Ciurlionis in its opening weekend.<\/p>\n
Pianist Rokas Zubovas (1966) knows a handy formula for the specific gravity of Ciurlionis: \u201cCompare it with Norway: suppose you put painter Edvard Munch and composer Edvard Grieg together in one person, then you have a nice idea.\u201d On Friday, Zubovas and his wife, pianist Sonata Deveikyt\u00e9-Zubovien\u00e9, played a \u2018narrative concert\u2019 in which Ciurlionis\u2019 music, art and literature came together.<\/p>\n
Pianist becomes actor<\/strong><\/p>\n The life of Zubovas is quite intertwined with that of Ciurlionis. To begin with, he is a great-grandson of the composer-artist. In 1986 he won joint first prize in the Ciurlionis Piano Competition, which he retrospectively calls \u201cthe most important event in my life.\u201d As a pianist, Zubovas is one of the foremost performers and advocates of his ancestor, and when he was involved as a musical advisor in the biographical film Letters to Sofija<\/em> (2013) to his own surprise, he was asked to play the lead role. \u201cI\u2019m not an actor, but I can do things that actors can\u2019t,\u201d says Zubovas. The film was screened in Maastricht on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n In retrospect it is easy to say that Zubovas was born to serve as an apostle of Ciurlionis. But it wasn\u2019t like that, he says: \u201eCiurlionis was not in my family big deal<\/em>. I am very grateful to them for that. I wasn\u2019t involved with him until I had to play his music at the conservatory \u2013 I met him first as a colleague, later as a family. And only during the filming did I delve into his personality. But it is strange if you have been so intensively involved with someone for over thirty years. I feel like I\u2019ve become more and more like him.\u201d<\/p>\n Synesthetic method<\/strong><\/p>\n On Friday evening, Zubovas and his wife played a quatre-mains version of Ciurlionis\u2019 most famous work, the symphonic poem Mice<\/em> (\u2018In the forest\u2019): \u201eThat is the symphonic representation of Lithuania, the absolute number 1 in the canon. We know from his letters that Ciurlionis himself played it on the piano for his friends,\u201d explains Zubovas. After that there is \u201ca dialogue between music and literature\u201d, in which paintings are also shown. Zubovas plays piano solo pieces and Sonata reads. In this way visitors can form an image of Ciurlionis\u2019 synaesthetic working method: he saw colors with sounds and vice versa. \u201cHe had an antenna for all that was new, and at the same time he was a romantic at heart.\u201d<\/p>\n In the concert they follow Ciurlionis\u2019 style development chronologically. In the beginning, around 1900, he focused on the scenic beauty of Lithuania. His interest then shifted to what Zubovas calls \u201cthe fairy tale.\u201d \u201eWe end with the piano variations The sea<\/em> from 1908, which are already very abstract. We show the painting cycle Sonata of the Ze<\/em>e from the same time and there is a literary fragment about the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n The man who would become a national hero did not live to see Lithuania\u2019s independence in 1918. Zubovas: \u201cCiurlionis led an intense life, smoked a lot, hardly ate and only drank very sweet tea. That lifestyle wrecked his body and in 1910 he collapsed. He spent the last year and a half of his life in a sanatorium, where he died of pneumonia.\u201d<\/p>\n Festival Vocallis<\/strong>, 22\/10 to 7\/11, at various locations in South Limburg. Inl: festivalvocallis.nl<\/a><\/p>\n Newsletter Source<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Connect with us:<\/em><\/p>\n Facebook<\/strong><\/a> | <\/strong>Instragram<\/a><\/strong> | <\/strong>Youtube<\/a> | \u010cNewsletter<\/a><\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ciurlionis, you say? For the uninitiated in Lithuanian culture: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis was the greatest composer the country produced, he was also one of the most important visual artists and a more than creditable writer. When Ciurlionis died in 1911, he left behind some 400 pieces of music and 300 paintings \u2013 and he was only thirty-five. The Limburg festival Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","cat-447-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8164,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8163\/revisions\/8164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mkcnamai.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNRC Culture Guide<\/a><\/p>\n