Kaunas Artists' House Lithuanian art news website
Skip to main content
We love light in Kaunas the most – it is very strong. The light is really strong here in spring, summer and autumn. Something similar can be noticed in Denmark, which is surrounded by water, but not in other countries. Therefore, we believe that this phenomenon may be related with rivers in Kaunas.
What was unusual? This time the opening concert of Pažaislis Music Festival did not draw crowds of listeners. All standing people had a perfect chance to sit down. Does it mean that the cultural tradition to attend the opening concert of Pažaislis Music Festival and to rejoice for its existence is weakening? Or perhaps it is a silent note of the audience that the festival of fifteen years could get slightly rebellious while it is a teenager?
D.Pulauskas: "I have an idea to play with birds now. It is possible. Veronika Povilionienė and I have recorded an album of lullabies, in which a nightingale is singing. I believe that I will succeed to communicate with birds."
The premieres of the 89th season of Kaunas State Drama Theatre, which ended recently, are very diverse by the genre and theme. The differences are also highlighted by the very dissimilar “origin” of creative groups of the four performances, the attitude to theatre, experience and individual stage biography. The fact that young people are creating under the roof of KSDT testifies about the open rather than rapacious position of the theatre. Meanwhile, the audience of the last theatre season could enjoy the diversity of the prey.
M.Pitrėnas will create the triptych of G.Puccini in Düsseldorf Opera in Germany next year. He has already signed a contract with the Austrian art agency Hollaender-Cali. One more project offered by this agency is “The Magic Flute” by W.A.Mozart in KölnOpera Theatre. This performance awaits M.Pitrėnas in the first half of the next season. In addition to new works in Riga, the Lithuanian will also create “Carmen” in Warsaw Grand Theatre.
It is still early to guess whether the poet V.Stankus, who received Z.Gėlė Prize for the debut selection of poems “A Walk on the Other Side of Ice”, will be inspired for new poetical searches by such evaluation or will fall asleep on laurels. Still, it is intriguing and tempting to have a walk on the other side of ice and to get acquainted with the most outstanding poetical debut of the year.
It is difficult to judge the concert of Pažaislis Music Festival “A.M.Germek: Orchestral Flamenco” as a solid formation. It was full of various moods, which provoked diverse emotions and evaluations. Maybe that was an attempt to persuade listeners of various types – both those who did not wish to contemplate complicated emotions and those who did not appreciate superficial and illustrative art.
“Kampas was one of the artists who forgot his personal life and dedicated all the spiritual passion to creation. He burned in his dreams destroying himself completely. It seems to me that he was a completely phenomenal case in Lithuania. Moderation, coldness and reason is typical of Lithuanians. Meanwhile, Kampas gave away all his health and spirit to creation. His paintings are full of heart rather than intellectualism or conceptualism. It is a quality of increasing value these days as less and less of it remains.” (E.Miliūnas).
"Under the Red Star": artists believed naively at the period of changes of 1940 that the annexation of Lithuania to the empire controlled by Stalin's dictatorship would improve lives of people.” Intellectuals hoped to preserve at least the cultural sovereignty and believed that political changes would not have any impact on artists. They wanted recognition and material remuneration hoping that the generous Soviet authorities would evaluate their attempts. However, wasn’t the naivety of the intelligentsia too dangerous?
