A native of Lithuania, Mūza Rubackytė was born into a family of musicians. At the age of seven, she made her professional début in Vilnius performing Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major with the Lithuanian National Chamber Orchestra. Six years later she won first prize in the country’s National Young Artists’ Competition, allowing her admittance to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, where she studied with teachers including Yakov Flier, Mikhail Voskressensky and Bela Davidovitch. During her conservatory period, she won first prize in the Tallinn (Estonia) Piano Competition and shortly thereafter was awarded the conservatory’s first prize in solo piano, chamber music and accompaniment. Her concert career has brought performances with the orchestras of the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Belarus to the great ensembles of Moscow, Vilnius and St Petersburg, and recitals outside the Soviet Union in Cairo, Prague, and Budapest, under the restrictive practices of the time. As a loyal citizen of Lithuania during those years, she was denied much, but she was allowed to enter the Budapest International Piano Competition (Liszt/Bartók), winning the Grand Prix. Political changes and Lithuanian independence made it possible to settle in Paris, her base for a continuing triumphant international career.

The Lithuanian painter and composer Mikolajus Konstantinas Čiurlionis studied music in Warsaw and then in Leipzig, returning to Warsaw for further study as a painter.

Orchestral Music

The colourful orchestral music of Čiurlionis includes evocative programme pieces, notably the symphonic poems The Sea and In the Forest.

Piano Music

The earlier piano music by Čiurlionis is Romantic in character, reflecting the influences of Warsaw and of Lithuania. This was followed by more modern pieces, making use of polymodal and polyrhythmic elements.