Balakauskas: Concertos

A leading figure in the music of his native Lithuania, Osvaldas Balakauskas developed his own musical language at first under the limitations of Soviet rule and then in the freer climate that followed under Khruschev, absorbing avant-garde elements. These did not prevail, and his music now draws on a variety of idioms, from the medieval to jazz. He was greatly influenced by Boris Lyatoshynsky, with whom he studied in the 1960s at the Kiev Conservatory. His Requiem in memory of Stasys Lozoraitis, a man greatly respected in Lithuania, was written in 1995. A setting of the traditional Latin text, it is representative of an approach that might appear eclectic.