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The Čiurlionis Quartet, regularly coming up with original thematic programmes, this time invites… to rediscover America! To try shake-off the Eurocentric perception of academic music and grasp the opposite vector – towards the origins of American music. As Quartet member Gediminas Dačinskas says, Bach’s centuries-old efforts to ‘harness’ European musical trends with Protestant chorales will be unexpectedly echoed here by the American hymns. The musical treasure trove of the Salvation Army, recognizable to many on this side of the Atlantic only from the tinkling bells and singing scenes that constantly appear in Hollywood Christmas films, through Ives’ opus will testify without any irony to the genesis of American classics. Although still fragile. Written just four decades later, Barber’s quartet captivates listeners not with hints of Mahlerian symphonism, but with a musical language marked by a local, ‘Made in America’, stamp. This American identity is particularly reinforced by the programme’s third piece, boosted with electronics. Adams’ soundscapes, reflecting in their own way the direction taken by Bach and Ives, draw on real and imagined artifacts of American music, as if confirming the triumph of rhythmic, dance music.