Fulbright Concert: Landsbergis at Library of Congress

Cordially Invite You to Attend A Concert

On Friday, March 5, at 12:30 PM, musician and statesman,Vytautas Landsbergis, Chair of the Lithuanian parliament and former head of state who led the Baltic country to independence from the former USSR, will perform the piano music and choral pieces of the post-Romantic Lithuanian composer and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis. The program, "Born of the Human Soul," will also feature the highly acclaimed mezzo-soprano Patricia Miller, Artist in Residence at George Mason University School of Music, and the George Mason University Singers under the direction of Dr. Stanley Engebretson. In keeping with the Fulbright mission to foster awareness, understanding and peace among countries through sharing of culture and ideas, this special concert finds a common bond between different worlds through musical expression. "Born of the Human Soul" is also a title of a 1998 CD devoted to the music of Ciurlionis by Professor Landsbergis  under EMI label. In a striking parallel to the Polish composer-premier Ignacy Jan Paderewski earlier in this century, Professor Landsbergis made his mark initially as a musician, before he became a prominent political leader. He is a Ciurlionis specialist and a professor at the Vilnius Conservatory. On March 11, 1990, as the Chairman of Lithuanian Supreme Council, Landsbergis presided over the extraordinary and historic session that proclaimed the restoration of an independent Lithuania. This declaration marked the end of USSR as little Lithuania paved the way to freedom for the Soviet republics. Enduring the Soviet blockade and violence in the streets, it was under Professor Landsbergis' leadership that Lithuania gained international recognition and rejoined the world community as an independent state. In the fall 1996 election, Vytautas Landsbergis was returned to parliament, and, on November 25, 1996, elected as Chairman of the Seimas [parliament].

This concert marks the first time this esteemed foreign leader will be displaying his immense musical talents before the Washington public and exemplifies Lithuania's peaceful, "singing revolution" for freedom earlier this decade.  It is a tribute to the artists turned politicians to whom much of Europe owes its freedom. During his Washington visit, Professor Landsbergis will also speak at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Thursday, March 4 at noon, and is the featured morning newsmaker at the National Press Club on March 5.

MIKALOJUS CIURLIONIS: Still largely unknown in America, it is said Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875-1911), a composer and painter, embodies the soul of the Lithuanian people.  That assessment springs from mythology and folklore in his work but also from a kind of expressive dreaminess, almost luxurious in its understatement.  If at first glance his compositions seem like strange symbolist enigmas, to those who have seen his paintings at the Ciurlionis museum in Kaunas and who have studied his music, the body of his work reflects an order of consciousness. Ciurlionis emerges out of world steeped in Romanticism. Educated at Warsaw and Leipzig Conservatories of Music, and later at Warsaw School of Fine Arts, his models are Romantic giants, like Adam Mickiewicz, and psychological realists like Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Universal in their sweep, his compositions are subtle, at times abstractive visions, not grand or excessively studied gestures. The otherworldly sorrow, the sensuality, is plain and accessible without  the unnatural undergrowth commonly found in symbolist conceits. Ciurlionis believes that the arts are one and primal in their appeal.

When one experiences Ciurlionis' washed out dreamlands, one understands from whence came the tarnished phantasmagoria of innocence in artists from Lithuania, for example,  poets like Tomas Venclova and Czeslaw Milosz. Ciurlionis' work, at once primal and novel, expresses nascent consciousness of what at the turn of the twentieth century was the periphery of Europe.  These archetypal epiphanies, for all their modesty, are quite worldly for an artist who was just 35 when he died. Ciurlionis' visionary compositions aim to unite the arts into a kind of spiritual synthesis of music, painting, and literature. Music and painting are expressions of the human spirit that springs from a particular locale, landscape,  and physiognomy. Situated somewhere between Chopin and Tchaikovsky, the musical compositions reclaim the sensual nuance of this world and make it sacred. There is idealism and much philosophy in his work, Fredrich Nietzsche especially, but perhaps most striking is the incredibly understated realm of the senses.

VYTAUTAS LANDSBERGIS: Born October 18, 1932 in Kaunas, Lithuania, a graduate of the Vilnius Conservatory of Music in 1955. Landsbergis was a professor of music until his election as President of the Supreme Council of Lithuania in 1990. Landsbergis was Lithuania's first Head of State as he presided over the former Soviet Republic's struggle to regain its independence as a nation.

Known affectionately as "the professor," Landsbergis is also an accomplished musician, specializing in the turn of the 20th century painter and composer Mikalojus Ciurlionis. In America, we know Vytautas Landsbergis as a statesman who challenged communism like Lech Walesa or Vaclav Havel . However, in addition to five books on politics, Professor Landsbergis edited scores and recorded music, including piano works of M.K. Ciurlionis on the EMI label. He even published a volume of poetry.

On June 3, 1988, professor Landsbergis was elected Head of Sajudis, the Lithuanian Freedom Movement that sprang from perestroika and remains Sajudis' Honorary president. On March 11, 1990, as the Chairman of Lithuanian Supreme Council, Landsbergis presided over the extraordinary and historic session that proclaimed the restoration of an independent Lithuania. This declaration marked the end of USSR as little Lithuania paved the way to freedom for all the former republics.

Enduring the Soviet blockade and violence in the streets, it was Professor Landsbergis' leadership that Lithuania gained international recognition and rejoined the world community as an independent state. In the fall 1996 election, Vytautas Landsbergis was returned to parliament, and, on November 25, 1996, elected as Chairman of the Seimas [parliament]. Today he stands at the helm of the Homeland Union, Lithuania's Conservative Party founded in 1995.  Professor Landsbergis holds honorary doctorates from Loyola of Chicago, Weber State, Vytautas Magnus in Kaunas, and Yale universities--and is internationally recognized for his courage and achievements.

PATRICIA MILLER: Graduate of Boston University and the New England Conservatory.  As a Fulbright Scholar, she received an Artist Diploma for advanced study from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy. An internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano, Miss Miller has appeared with leading opera companies and symphony orchestras throughout the United States, Europe, South America, Canada, Japan and Australia.  She has performed with such leading orchestras as the American Symphony at Carnegie Hall, The Boston Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas, the English Bach Festival Orchestra of London (where she recorded the opera The Loves of Hercules by Cavalli under the Erato label, with Michel Corboz, conductor), the L'orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Pittsburgh Symphony with Lorin Maazel.  Miss Miller is Professor and Director of Vocal Studies in the Department of Music and Artist-in-Residence in the Institute of the Arts, George Mason University. Most recently she has performed at the Library of Congress, the Sumner Museum, Konigshalle in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria, the Lisner Auditorium, the National Building Museum and as La principessa in Puccini's Suor Angelica in Rome, Italy.

STANLEY ENGEBRETSON: Conductor and Director of Choral Studies at George Mason University where he conducts four choirs and teaches graduate choral conducting courses.  Prior to coming East, he taught at the University of Minnesota and served as the Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Chorale.  Dr. Engebretson holds performance degrees in Voice and Piano as well as a Doctor of Music Arts degree from Stanford University in Conducting.  In addition, he has received several research awards and grants for advanced study in Aspen, San Francisco, New York and Europe with internationally acclaimed conductors including Gregg Smith, Margaret Hillis, Roger Wagner, Eric Ericson and Robert Shaw.  In 1993 he assumed the position of Artistic Director of the Masterworks Chorus and Orchestra and, for the past six years, he has appeared as lecturer and professional singer at the Carmel Bach Festival in California and more recently in the Festliche Tage Tier in Germany.

Sponsors:

George Mason University
Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania
Baltic American Freedom League
Friday Morning Music Club Inc
EMI Records