SOP Podcast #16 - Teisutis Makacinas About His Organ Works

Welcome to episode 16 of Secrets of Organ Playing Podcast!

Teisutis Makačinas (b. 1938) is a prolific Lithuanian composer who describes his style of writing as a junction of polyphonic neoclassicism, with a sort of folk music transformations.

For organ he has created 6 sonatas and 3 notebooks - Lithuanian, Ancient, and Armenian. I met with him for a conversation on the occasion of my upcoming premiere performance which happened on October 10, 2015 of his newest work - Festive Sonata-Symphony (2015) for organ.​

"At the beginning I didn't write the sounds but I thought about the atmosphere, about the character of the work. I had about 3 months to focus and to think about this. From the outside it should have looked really strange because I was walking around the room from window to window meditating about that work. And then I started to improvise on the keyboard - then these musical ideas and intonations came into my head."

Our conversation happened in Lithuanian which I later translated into English.

Watch the video of the premiere performance of this work:

Enjoy and share your comments below.
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Relavant link:
Profile of Teisutis Makacinas on LMIC - Music Information Centre Lithuania