Spanish musicians love Shostakovich

Share of Spanish guest appearances at 73. Ljubljana Festival was enlarged or expanded with a concert by the Radio Television Comerce and Orchestra of Spain under the leadership of internationally renowned conductor Marc Moncusi last night at the Slovenian Philharmonic. It was not full; it is known that half of Slovenia is on vacation, supposedly a million in Croatia, because they already have a few hundred thousand weekends there. And the property binds, and the diversity and attractiveness of the country even more. Children love the sea.

Spain is musically rich, has a huge number of festivals, among which the internationally highest ranked in Granada; among the ten best in the world, as it was ranked 72 last year after the London comparative and analytical survey. Ljubljana Festival. The approach of Spain to Slovenia is not only taking place in the field of music; let us recall the cooperation of the director Tomaž Pandur in the theatre field with Spain and South America, which was interrupted by a sudden death due to a heart attack. At the time of his death, he had the greatest publicity in Spain.

The famous Catalan group La Fura dels Baus was again in Ljubljana this year with its co-founder Carlus Padrissa and probably has not yet said its last word, similar to ADDA Simfonica Alicante with its young and excellent conductor Josep Vicent. There are also many soloists, dancers... Of course there are still a lot of possibilities...

One of the most influential Catalan musical figures from the beginning of the 20 th century, Eduard Toldrà, performed publicly as a seven-year-old miraculous violinist, and in a series of musical successes he was educated in an excellent conductor, and at the same time he developed a compositional language, which he referred to the current local artistic movement. Vistes al mar is one of those compositions that have summarized the ideas of the Catalan movement noucentism.

At that time, Catalan nationalism was already expressed in the spirit of cultural modernism. The members of the "movement of the new century" did not want to be without the unknown together with society, but wanted to balance the rapidly changing world with the classic ideals of harmony, order, calmness and lyricism. Vistes al mar (1921) is subtitled Poetic Evocations and is derived from the three titles of the Catalan poet Joan Maragall. Brnistra or the Spanish broom is a local seaside flower that represents the liveliness of the coastal pulse of nature in Toldrà's introductory sentence. There, in the distances by the sea, he quietly meditates over the view of the moonlight above the sea, and the final sentence confronts us with the playfulness and turbulence of the sea waves. Toldrà certainly relies on the heritage of the Impressionists – especially Debussy and Ravel – and the French dreaminess is replaced by a cheerful Mediterranean character. (From the program of Lovrenc Rogelj).

The composition of Eduard Toldrà Views of the Sea / Vistes al mar has three strikes: Brnistra / La ginesta, There in the distance by the sea / Allà a les llunyanies de la mar and the Sea was cheerful / La marstave allegra. The introduction to the performance was bold, but still somewhat uncertain, playing strings clean, but not completely together enough, and with too little beauty of the tone, in-depth, in accordance with the lauded nature, the sea, but through the view and perspective of man. The beauty of the narration itself was missing, which is essentially noblely narrative, melodious.

The performers themselves should immediately set the highest criteria for performing in Ljubljana, which expects a global level at its festival. In the following, the chamber orchestra improved and, after a quick first sentence in the second sentence, handed over to meditation, which he performed very calmly, expressively richly, slowly and more experienced. The third sentence was dynamic, melodic, somewhat dramatic, with brief breaths, as if they were actually distant from the sea. The third sentence was a real epic when you see the sea in all its miraculous beauty and react emotionally, which is recognized in the composition in the basic melody, which is repeated several times, in variants and increasing elation and domination. The end was effective and cemented the reputation of the Catalan composer.

The core of the programme is occupied by the works of Dmitry Shostakovič. Koncert za He wrote the concert for piano, trumpet and strings in c minor, Op. 35, in 1933 at the age of twenty-seven. At that time, he was already considered one of the most striking compositional voices of the Soviet Union, and therefore also enjoyed a certain degree of artistic autonomy.

The concert for piano, trumpet and strings was initially created as a work for the trumpet, but the score quickly grew and the composer added a solo piano, thus encroaching on the genre of double concert. In addition to the unusual band without winds and percussion, the concert stands out with a combination of stylistic references.

Shostakovich also consciously distanced himself from the monumental piano concerts of Russian romance and relied on the idiom of contemporaries: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Poulence, Hindemitha. He has re-edited music with dance forms, folk melodies and parody quotes. The work is playful, sometimes characteristically sarcastic, but compositionally extremely elaborate. The piano assumes the leading role, the trumpet is often heard as his humorous commentary, and the strings are a connecting element.

The composer also relied on his experience in writing with writing film music and playing the piano for accompaniing silent films in cinemas, which is often heard in the mood of the composition – the composition is constantly reminiscent of a theatrical dialogue. (From the program).

The concert begins with a virtuosically demanding for the pianist, and as the performer himself described it from the stage, which is not a custom, represents many things, from humour to grotesque, political irony to comedy and painting of film images. Soloist immediately showed the appropriate technique and successfully completed the first Allegro moderata with the motif of fate, which is repeated, even in dialogue with the otherwise trumpet in the background. More open is the question of what Shostakovič wanted to express with the second very slow sentence Lento, which they performed with a long introduction on their own, before they are also slowly joined by a sensitive piano, which in the continuation, as in the outburst, indicates some ironic moments, but quickly sweats back, as if he was afraid of what he had just confessed. From the background, for the first time, a melody of the trumpet is heard, calm, restrained, but perceived. The same dynamic of the piano is logical, but it continues the dialogue with the trumpet, which then shuts up and the slow piano continues on its own. For the pianist, there was a challenge in the purity and beauty of the tone with the discreet accompaniment of strings and the slow end. The third sentence of Moderato begins the solo piano in the harmonic rich introduction, to which the rather intense, almost dramatic strings relate, and the dialogue continues, when the performance continues in the fourth sentence of the Allegro con brio when the piano is established for Shostakovich by a characteristic bold rhythm, a kind of dance harlequinism, and enters into dialogue the trumpet, as if the composer had placed it with his special solo into a socially critical position, from which the composer would be able to express the same. Poor Stalin, if he had recognized all these shooters as meant for himself. Well, there's probably them. The performance was effective and convincing for everyone.

Armenian pianist Dimitry Iškanov, who is still studying at the Mozarteum in Salzburg near Pavel Gililov, thanked the addition of: Chopin's Revolutionary Etuda, Op. 10, No. 12.

Almost three decades younger The chamber symphony in c-mol, Op. 110a, is an orchestral adaptation of the String Quartet No. 8 in c-mol, op. 110, which Shostakovič wrote in July 1960 during a working visit to Dresden. He traveled there to write music for a film about the destruction of the city in the Allied bombing in the last months of World War II.

The work was created in just three days, and is dedicated to the victims of fascism and war. Despite the dedication and purposeful origin, the composition is now understood as one of the most personal works of the composer, in which autobiographical hints and historical allusions are thickened, and is permeated by anxious feelings.

In 1967, the composer's longtime collaborator Rudolf Baršaj prepared a version for the string orchestra entitled Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, with his Šostakovič's consent. The content remains the same. Five sentences are marked by quotes from his earlier works, Russian revolutionary poems and funeral songs. The introductory theme is written with the initials of the composer’s name – D-Es-C-H – which appears as a musical signature in almost every phrase. Shostakovich deliberately opened the entire work with his own name motif and embedded it among the quotes from his pre-war works and the poem cycle From Jewish Folk Songs.

In his conversations with his son Maxim, the composer repeatedly stated that he dedicated the quartet to himself, that he wrote it “to himself in honor” as a kind of his own mourning music. According to his friends, forced entry into the Communist Party, which happened at that time, plunged him into a deep personal crisis, he even thought about suicide. Outwardly, the work can be understood as a piety towards the victims of fascism, and inwardly for a confrontation with the historical moment in which the composer lived. Some motifs – such as the knocking of strings, which Maxim interpreted as an allusion to the KGB knocking at night raids, became typical examples of sound allegoric in the musicological literature. (From the program).

Implementation of the Chamber Symphony in five sentences I. Largo, II. Allegro Molto, III. Allegretto, IV. Largo, V. Largo was tough. The arranger Rudolf Baršaj, whom we once met in Ljubljana as a guest of the SF, established a not very typical melos for the composer in the introductory slow-moving Largo. Last night's performance quite inexpressible, reflexive, insufficiently intense, because the piano or pianissimo must be even more noticeable. But immediately in the second sentence of Allegro molto came to a real eruption of Shostakovich's aggressive authentication, emphasizing the central melody, in which there is a lot of sarcasm, aggressiveness, expressive leap. The third sentence of Allegretto continues the previous espri, when the daring is associated with the dance rhythm, and the eternal repetition of the motifs speaks of the perseverance of where it will lead the composer, but we do not know. The fourth and fifth sentences are Largo, which is not customary. The prediction of fate begins with very bold entries of strings, repetition of blows and reconciliation, so that the expression only dramatizes, and the strings become denser, stronger, slower, as if the composer wanted to retreat into isolation, but still hears the blows somewhere from the outside – from a stronger politics that wants to intimate the individual, the intellectual and the creator. The performance was solid.

With the final song, we return to popular rejoicing. Romanian violist, composer and arranger Lucian Moraru began his career in the Philharmonic of George Enescu, and in parallel he worked as a soloist and chamber musician. In 2005, he co-founded the Traffic Strings, with which he also performed at 73 on Tuesday. Ljubljana Festival.

The Romanian capriccio is based on the Romanian folk song Ciocârlia (Škrjanček) and is thus a tribute to the music of his homeland. It's an extremely rhythmic, playful dance song. In her tireless pulse, intrusions of bird chresting (especially in the cadence of the pan's flute), and above all, she is elegantly traveling tonal language, we may also be able to hear some shostakovic humour. (From the program).

Anyone who has heard both performances, the first in the Križevniška church with Traffic Strings, the second with Spanish strings, immediately noticed the difference with the use of reeds or a pungle, which is loudly much closer to the mentioned lark, and we also hear a cuckoo, as last night in the SF was just a dialogue of the violin solo with other strings.

Composer Lucian Moraru first performed at the festival as a violist at the Sonart String Quartet with the pianist Epifanio Comis, then with Traffic Strings, and at last night he was a listener to his performance at the Slovenian Philharmonic. After the tumultuous applause, conductor Marc Moncusi invited him to the stage to introduce himself to the audience and show his creative identity.

Lucian Moraru is an excellent violist and arranger and composer with decades of international experience. It is important, however, to represent and represent, especially abroad, the Romanian music culture.

As an addition, the conductor Marc Moncusi turned to the audience with an address as a thank you for the invitation and guest appearance and the announcement of the composer who will perform it. This was Joaquin Turina, and as his composition, the conductor mentioned the unknown La Oracion del torero, Op. 34 from 1925, written for the string orchestra.

This is a prayer of the bullfighter before he goes to the arena. Already in the introductory Allegro moderato, the luxury of meditation, vision, the accumulation of courage, the thought of a possible fall is shown here, as a kind of recapitulation of life, reconciliation, the search for the last moments of beauty in an otherwise rich life. It seemed as if the mental lever had a short solo cello, then a dialogue of the bright first violins and darker low strings, and all in an increasingly dazzling, noble melos, which remains within the limits of confession, intimacy, author-reflection or the aforementioned prayer. When you pray, you turn to God for help, but with human experience. At Allegro moderato, in the continuation of prayer, the prayer turns into the boldness of direct gathering of courage and determination. The composition becomes bolder, but again with the cello as a contemplative element. Follows Andante, also more calm, almost in sudden fear and caution. Similarly, Lento, which was carried out slowly and as such disappears into the pp.

https://kritik.si/2025/08/01/spanski-glasbeniki-imajo-radi-sostakovica/