The Lithuanian composer Jeronimas Kačinskas (1907–2005) is one of the lost radicals of twentieth-century music. Under the influence of his Czech teacher, Alois Hába, Kačinskas abandoned traditional syntax in favour of an atonal athematicism, whereby the music is in constant evolution, with freely pulsing rhythms and melodic lines that branch forward like tendrils.

His lyrical but tightly woven Nonet was well received at the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in London in 1938 - Bartók was one of the fellow composers who congratulated him. When Kačinskas fled Lithuania from the approaching Russians in 1944 (his name was on a death list), he had to abandon almost all his scores and begin a new life as church musician in Boston, Mass. Only with the collapse of the Soviet empire could the work be reconstructed – and the composer returned home in triumph.

The performers on this CD are some of Lithuania’s leading musicians. The St Christopher Quintet was formed in 2003 and in 2007 was awarded first prize at the Henri Tomasi International Woodwind Quintet Competition in Marseilles.

The pianist Gabrielius Alekna won second prize at the International Beethoven Piano Competition in Vienna in 2005 and has appeared as a soloist in the Musikverein with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra in New York and with the Belarus State Symphony Orchestra in Minsk. Daniel Barenboim describes him as ‘a highly gifted pianist and musician’.

The flautist Giedrius Gelgotas has a number of international prizes to his name and has appeared as soloist and chamber and orchestral musician around the globe, in the United States, across Europe, in Egypt and Japan. The pianist Daumantas Kirilauskas teaches piano at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, and can be often found performing in both classical and contemporary music festivals. Arnoldas Gurinavičius is principal double-bass of the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra.