Brighton Year-Round 2025
Emilia Karaliute Kankles Recital St Nicholas Church, Brighton
Emilia Karaliute
Genre: Live Music, Music
Venue: St Nicholas Church, Dyke Road, Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Lithuanian Emilia Karaliute brings her country’s national instrument, the Kankles, to St Nicholas, for an entrancing, indeed spell-binding recital at St Nicholas.
A hidden gem of a recital and a consummate performer. Karaliute must return.
Review
Lithuanian Emilia Karaliute brings her country’s national instrument, the Kankles, to St Nicholas, for an entrancing, indeed spell-binding recital at St Nicholas.
Nearly all the music is Lithuanian. Only Mikalojus Ciurlionis (1875-1911), Lithuania’s national composer and painter, is internationally acclaimed till the advent of more recent voices. Karaliute introduces the music with just enough context to draw you in.
Karaliute outlines Lithuania’s very late conversion to Christianity as a springboard to her first pieces: Alfonsas Mikulskis’ ‘The Forest Idyll’ in three parts. It’s an atmospheric sweep of pantheism and sets up the tonal reaches of this fascinating instrument: part zither (most of all), miniature harp, part dulcimer and part clavichord (if resembling a kind of plucked keyboard and pedals) fines down this world. Constructed of lighter woods like pine, it has to resonate in a small yet resonant acoustic, and St Nicholas proves idea.
Following this an anthem Valentina’s Bagdonas’ ‘The Dawn is Breaking’ melds late romanticism with a bracing folksong element and a gorgeous wisp of melody.
A true anthem attached to national poem, Juozas Naujalis’ ‘Dear Lithuania’ seems a whispered paean to self-determination, rather different say to Finlandia.
Soviet rule has ensured a certain starvation of original material. Nevertheless Jonas Svedas’ Prelude and Fugue in C major sets up a strong and shimmering tension and release, and is satisfying. Similarly Alphonse Hasselmans’ Nocturne Op 43 cites a traditional piano framework but is very different. This you feel is the way Ciurlionis himself might have gone had he lived. It’s a dark chromatic and exploratory piece. We need more like this but the whole programme is a small miracle of tasters.
Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘On Wings of Song’ falls perfectly here in this arrangement, proving small classics can be recruited. Chosen as a point of recognition when none of these other pieces would be even known, it’s an attractive point of reference. Next time – and clearly original works for the instrument are to the fore – a late Prelude of Ciurlionis might work perfectly somewhere, too.
Two last pieces prove even more intriguing Takatsugu’s ‘Muramatsu Land’ is a transcription from a similar Japanese instrument (the Takahashi, specifically Tsugaru-jamisen) and is both apposite and opening another sound world of possibilities.
Irish composer Caroline Elizabeth Harding though has directly responded to Kataliute’s plea for more material. Her ‘Rebmaer’ involved contemporary practices like knocking in the wood if the casing as well as enharmonics around the core themes. I’d love to hear it again and it’s superbly realised by a performer both passionately championing her national instrument and who holds us, as one audience member put it, mesmerised. A hidden gem of a recital and a consummate performer. Karaliute must return.
