Rūta Vitkauskaitė

Programme Note

I started writing NANGA in autumn during long walks through rainy fields. I continued into the tired winter nights and through spring, with the bursting energy of slowly returning post-lockdown traffic, and finally completed it in the generously sunny summer. It has been a strange year, with long periods of isolation, very little social life, prolonged moments of stillness and reflection, while I was living a very active inner life of ideas, thoughts, memories, creative flow, and frustrations. All of that sank into the musical landscape of this composition: a record of the crisp delicacy of the first frost, sentimental afternoon memories provoked by scattered sunbeams, and the burst of thoughts in the deep, dark Scottish winter nights.

Overall, NANGA is a very active piece. I imagined it as a wave of energy, an unrelenting force embodying the constant change from ever-passing time. The wave returns in its cycle three times, finally being taken over by violoncello Cadenza (co-written with Gemma Rosefield), and settling onto the long rumbling Coda in the lowest register of the instrument.

I chose the title NANGA for its sound rather than its meaning. The sound of this word can be found in a variety of cultures. It can mean the highest compliment in one language and an insult in another. It can refer to a musical instrument in one part of the planet and a mountain in another. For me, NANGA sounds like a soft but strong jump forward, an assertive start with a strong and direct aim, a peaceful pool of water dropping into a powerful waterfall at its end. It is very versatile; it can unlock many contradictory meanings within the piece, all of them united, however, by the flow of one musical stream aiming towards the grounded finale.