Our releases of the classical music in the last year
Like many cultural events in the last year the pandemic also affected the traditional annual meeting and media presentation of the creators and performers of new classical music editions at ZKP RTV Slovenija. Instead the protagonists spoke about the new music albums on the Third Program of Radio Slovenia - the ARS Program on a special thematically rounded show Glasbeni utrip prepared by the editor Anamarija Štukelj Cusma. The guests on the show were Mojca Menart, head of publishing at ZKP RTV Slovenia, Simon Krečič, conductor and artistic director of the Maribor SNG Opera, Boris Rener, music producer at Radio Slovenia, violinist Romeo Drucker, member of the Tartini String Quartet, conductor Stojan Kuret, flutist Matej Zupan, composer Matic Romih, violinist and composer Matija Krečič and children's music editor at Radio Slovenia Matej Jevnišek.
CLASSICAL MUSIC
MATIC ROMIH: HORIZON
Pianist and composer Matic Romih is releasing a debut album entitled Horizon that he describes as: „The horizon is the meeting point of the earth's surface and the universe, binding the two into one reality. It is the crossroads, where the infinite universe and endless imagination collide with the physical world and its sense of time, thus creating a sensible form and refined music (all at once).“ Although his works reflect many different musical genres, he is most dedicated to choral music. He is an active participant, composer and accompanist in various male, mixed, children’s and youth choirs. His oeuvre encompasses everything from solo and ensemble pieces, children’s musicals (Dorimu) and chamber operettas (Gaja), to orchestral music, such as “Black Hole”, premiered in 2019 by the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, which can also be found on the album Horizon.
MATIJA KREČIČ: CUT / REZ
Violonist and composer Matija Krečič says about the album the following: "The selection of compositions for the album at hand has come up rather spontaneously at the thought of the works I wrote in the recent years. The music, while composed for different occasions, interlinks into a whole and forms a dramaturgical arc which had appeared to me already at the first thoughts about the new album."
MATEJ ZUPAN (FLUTE) AND ANDREJA KOSMAČ (PIANO): OPERA FANTASIES
At a time when opera was the most sought-after musical event, its glamor was not available to a large part of the music-going public. With the rise of instrumental virtuosity, however, new ways of disseminating opera melodies emerged. Many 19th century virtuosos wrote such compositions – which were also known as fantasies or potpourries – in which they combined the attractive melodies of popular operas with brilliant virtuosity. The featured repertoire brings romantic salon music performed by flutist Matej Zupan and pianist Andreja Kosmač.
TARTINI STRING QUARTET: QUATTRO SONATE À QUATTRO
The Tartini String Quartet ranks among the best chamber ensembles on the Slovenian chamber music scene. It was founded in 1983 when the leaders of the four string sections of the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra decided to enrich their music experience in that most sublime of all chamber groups, the string quartet. They formed the Slovenian Philharmonic String Quartet, but subsequently, in the early 1990s, adopted the name of the famous Piran violinist Giuseppe Tartini. Tartini’s sonatas à quattro are in three movements. Since Giuseppe Tartini was not in the habit of dating his musical opus, musicologists assume that the compositions for four string instruments were composed in the decade between 1760 and 1770.
HUGO WOLF: CHORAL MUSIC
Hugo Wolf's choral music programme includes his entire opus for choir a cappella and with piano. 16 songs in late Romantic and Expressionist musical language are very demanding for singers and therefore rarely performed and recorded. That is why album by RTV Slovenia Chamber Choir, one of the oldest radio choirs in Europe, conducted by choral Grand Prix Europa winner Stojan Kuret is so unique.
RTV SLOVENIA'S CHILDREN'S CHOIR AND THE RTV SLOVENIA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: WHERE IS TINA?
Children's cantata Where is Tina? is now available on CD and in the digital form. The compositions are performed by the RTV Slovenia's Children's Choir under the direction of choirmaster Anka Jazbec and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mojca Lavrenčič. The lyrics were written by Barbara Gregorič Gorenc, the music by Matevž Goršič.
THE CENTENARY OF THE MARIBOR OPERA
At the very end of the jubilee celebration of the Maribor Opera THE ARS Programmme of PMS RTV Slovenija, ZKP Publishing and Record Label and SNG Maribor combined archival recordings with the most recent ones to create an music panorama of the history of the institution. On this double edition the chorus, orchestra and opera soloists are presented for your music enjoyment as suitably as possible, especially with their “trademark” repertoire that has proved to be their greatest success.
PARTNERSHIP COLLECTION
The third program of Radio Slovenia - Ars Program, ZKP RTV Slovenia and the Association of Slovenian Composers have created a partnership collection, which has been published on physical sound carriers since the mid-1990s. This is the first time we present the digital release of three music albums.
BRINA JEŽ BREZAVŠČEK: INWARD DIMENSIONS
Brina Jež Brezavšček is a composer of extremely intimate musical statements. In her opus, there is a strikingly small number – or in some cases a complete absence – of large-scale symphonic works, expansive vocalinstrumental creations, grand and vast compositions, and so on. On the contrary, she is a creator of intimate colours, tiny miniatures, in a sophisticated, refined language of inward-looking, introverted musical murmurings. She is marked by a “subtle sense for creating sound”, as English musicologist Niall O’Loughlin aptly put it. This gives the convincingness of her music a constantly unique character.
NEVILLE HALL: OR LOOKED BACK TO THE FLOWING
It is in this period after postmodernism that we can locate the music of Neville Hall (1962). On the broad fan of contemporary compositional trends, he is among those who remain committed to the aesthetic mission of art, who place their trust in the thoughtful structuration of form and the ascetic use of minimal material, and who question the unambiguous referentiality of music. This results in a clear shift away from the postmodern desire for a pronounced semantic conception of music and increased communicativeness. At the same time, Hall abandons simpler Modernist ideas associated above all with shock, innovation and the dismantling of existing techniques and procedures. Much more central to Hall’s considerations is the distinctly subtle selection of material and, even more, the formal processing of this material. It often turns out that the development of material and form are equated; more than the material itself, which is often expressively rudimentary, emphasis is placed on the way the material develops, accumulates or dissipates.
DUO DEKLEVA: CANTICUM SLOVENICUM
Pianists Alenka and Igor Dekleva studied the piano at the Ljubljana Academy of Music. After graduating and completing master’s degrees, they began performing as the Dekleva Piano Duo in 1967. In their more than forty years of collaboration, they have performed concerts and recitals, appeared with orchestras, and recorded for radio and television in Slovenia, in all of the republics of the former Yugoslavia, and in many other European countries. Particular mention should be made of their tour of the Soviet Union (1981) with an opening recital in Leningrad (St Petersburg), a recital in Helsinki, Finland (1983) in Aalto’s celebrated Finlandia Hall, an extensive ten-concert tour of Denmark (1993), as well as numerous performances in Germany, Austria, Italy, and so on. Particularly notable was their tour of the USA (2006), with concerts in Washington DC, Chicago, Milwaukee, and elsewhere.
