Juozas Gruodis (1884-1948)
Piano Music
Piano Sonata No.1 in C sharp minor Patetico (1919)
Morning Song (1920)
Piano Sonata No.2 in F minor (1921)
Bells (1927)
Variations in B major (1920) (First recording)
Daumantas Kirilauskas (piano)
rec. 2021-24, Lithuanian National Philharmonic Hall, Vilnius & Vytautas Magnus University Music Academy, Kaunas, Lithuania
Toccata Classics TOCC0737 [68]
The last disc I reviewed was of songs for the female voice by Estonian composer Ester Mägi. With this disc, I move down the Baltic coast to Lithuania for piano music by Juozas Gruodis. Each discovery I make of composers from the three Baltic states confirms that, despite being small both geographically and in terms of population, they have made significant contributions to world music culture. With the vast number of composers whose music exists to be played in concert halls and on disc, or, these days, streamed, it is, I suppose understandable that composers such as those from these three countries will struggle to achieve the kind of exposure that the familiar names receive, exceptions such as Arvo Pärt and Eduard Tuma proving the rule. That is why I so admire recording companies like Toccata which, rather than taking the easiest options of recording yet more Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms, choose to ferret out lesser or even totally unknown composers to focus on. It may not bring untold financial rewards but it does the composers, artists and the music-loving public sterling service and I take off my proverbial hat to them for it.
Considered the ‘Father of Lithuanian Music’, Gruodis was born in the tiny village of Rokėnai in the north-east of the country close to border of Latvia. By “tiny”, suffice it to say that the 2011 census put the population at 95. Among other things, his father made musical instruments. The choice to study music would not therefore have struck his father as strange, so Juozas was able to begin studying it in a music school 40 kilometres from home. His fierce determination to become a musician and composer prompted him to become a sufficiently in demand organist that he was asked to play in many country churches and thereby earn enough money to pay for himself to go to Moscow with the hope of getting into the conservatoire. After a year of independent study with two teachers and, having already composed several piano works and two large-scale fantasias, he was accepted into the conservatoire. Here he was influenced by such composers as Skryabin and you can certainly hear that in various sections of his first piano sonata which he began to write in Yalta where he had been sent to recuperate following the contraction of an unspecified illness while acting as a band leader in the Russian army into which he had been conscripted during the First World War. He had been drafted into the army because Lithuania was then part of the Russian empire.
Lithuania, in common with its two Baltic neighbours was always being invaded by other countries around it and, following the end of the First World War, its brief spell of independence was ended when Poland took control, even changing the capital from Vilnius to Kaunas. This situation lasted until the Soviet Union occupied Poland from late 1939 when the capital was once again restored to Vilnius but Lithuania was then fated to remain part of the USSR until 1991. Despite this, there was a thirst for establishing a separate cultural identity for the country and Gruodis, who had dreamed of becoming the Lithuanian Grieg by finding a distinctive Lithuanian voice in music, set about trying to do this. It is generally agreed that he did indeed manage it and that his sterling efforts in this direction led a whole number of native composers to follow in his path and add more and more examples of a music with a distinctive Lithuanian voice to the corpus of its musical legacy.
Gruodis’ first piano sonata is a hefty substantial work with dense writing that presents many challenges to the pianist. Its distinctive character is established right from the start and its emotional aspect is obvious and deeply felt, a feeling of unease pervading the movement, despite some brief glimpses of calmer moments. The main theme is recapitulated, rising in intensity as the first movement draws to a close and sets the stage for the second. This begins in a calmer mood though it maintains the overall disturbed nature and gradually rises in intensity as it moves to a climax before calming down once again and ending in an air of mystery. The scherzo is short but serious though not without revealing a beautiful urgency. The finale, like the very beginning of the work, begins in an anxious mood with echoes from its opening and the intensely felt emotional core of the piece is ever-present as the music makes its resolute progress towards the end, refusing to be diverted by other themes that try to impose themselves, with the sonata finishing on a firmly positive note.
Morning Song, Gruodis wrote when he was recuperating in Yalta. This is a much more rhapsodic piece though his basic demeanour is still evident and it has a serious rather than playful nature to it.
His second piano sonata, like the first, opens in a serious and declamatory tone though it is markedly gentler in general and less emotionally disturbed, its second subject particularly so. The second movement, which was released separately as a standalone piece In Lithuania, shows Gruodis’ ability in incorporating folk material in his music. The original folksong’s title Quietly flows the Nemen River reveals the idea and in Gruodis’ hands the picture of it is vividly brought to life. The third and final movement is a brief affair, playfully presented and the sonata comes to a close before you know it.
Bells is an extremely successful realisation of bells, as convincing an expression of them as any I have ever heard, the last note sustained long enough to suggest the tintinnabulation continues even after the piece has ended.
The final work on this engaging disc is a set of a theme and thirteen variations and a final fugue, here receiving its first recording. It was composed in 1920 as was his Morning Song. The theme itself is brilliantly constructed to make the most of the variations which do more than merely give a nod to Chopin; indeed, variation IV carries the subtitle ‘A la Chopin’. It is unashamedly Romantic, perhaps belying its date of composition, and it is easy to understand why the set achieved independent popularity.
Juozas Gruodis is certainly a composer worth getting to know and the disc is a great place to start, so it is to be hoped that more of his music will follow, especially given that there is so much more to discover from the ‘Father of Lithuanian Music’. Pianist Daumantas Kirilauskas presents Gruodis’ music convincingly and the playing shows a clear conviction born of admiration.
Steve Arloff
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