Composer Dalia Raudonikyte With focuses on exploring nuances within the phenomenon of sound, approaching it from a variety of multi-disciplinary angles including the visual arts, literature, philosophy, computer programming and ethnography. Her music often creates implicit links to apssages from great literature by including literary quotes in her scores that encode the performer's perception and interpretation withe xtra-musical reference points.
In her solo clarinet work, Solitarius, we hear whispered fragments of text occasionally woven into the fabric of the performance itself, a window into the unspoken literary source that informs its interpretation. The work unfolds otherwise as a thoughtful soliloquy, a rhetorical dialogue with different sides of oneself. Ventus is timbrally more exploratory, as fluttering extended techniques in the saxophone merge with unstable sounds in the electronics. The chamber orchestra piece Grues et nix revels in dense sound masses and long, sustained lines, creating crestling waves of evocative and expressive harmony. FCH, an homage to Frederic Chopin, begins with an exploration of sparse lyricism before evoking its dedicatee through pianistic passagework. The solo guitar work Primo cum lumine solis also remains within a conventional harmonic frame for the mos tpart, melding the free, rhetorical dialogue of Solitarius with modeal treatment. The final section of the piece breaks away from the prevailing lyricism with some angular passagework before the final cadence brings back the expansive character of the opening section. The final work on the program, Idem non semper idem, returns to the fragility of the extended techniques of teh solo saxophone, with unearthly multiphonics serving as architectural pillars for this strange and tactile sonic language.
Dalia R. With's expressive palette is driven by an internal muse. At her disposal is a strong command over experimental instrumental technique as well as a penchant for beautiful expressive melancholy. Connecting the diverse expressive worlds she inhabits is a solemn, lyrical quality tha tpierces through varied textures.
