Download Akademski zbor Ivan Goran Kovačić

54. dubrovačke ljetne igre
54th Dubrovnik Summer Festival
2003.
Hrvatska Croatia
Akademski zbor Ivan Goran Kovačić
Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir
Luka Vukšić
Dirigent Conductor
Atrij Kneževa dvora
Rector's Palace Atrium
8. kolovoza 8th August
21.30 9.30 p.m.
Georg Friedrich Händel:
Canticorum iubilo
Alessandro Scarlatti:
Exultate Deo
Marc' Antonio Ingegneri:
Ecce quomodo moritur
Tomás Luis da Victoria:
Ave Maria
Jacobus Arcadelt:
Ave Maria
Dmitrij Stjepanovič Bortnjanski:
34. duhovni koncert
Sacred Concerto No. 34
Sergej Vasiljevič Rahmanjinov:
Bogorodice djevo
The Blessed Virgin
Hector Berlioz:
Quaerens me iz Requiema
Quarens me from Requiem
Johannes Brahms:
Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen,
motet za zbor a cappella, op. 74, br. 1
Motet for choir a cappella, Op. 74, No. 1
Langsam und ausdruckvoll
Wenig bewegter
Langsam und sanft
Choral
Franjo Dugan:
Molitva
Prayer
Franjo Dugan ml. jr.:
Zahvalnica
Thanksgiving song
Boris Papandopulo:
Nad grobom ljepote djevojke
The Tomb of a Beautiful Girl
Josip Štolcer Slavenski:
Voda zvira
Water springs
The Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir was founded in 1948, under prominent
artistic leadership from the very beginning, including Duško Prašelj, Županović,
Adalbert Marković, Dinko Fio, Vladimir Kranjčević and Saša Britvić. Saša Britvić
has been the artistic leader of the Choir since 1987. The Choir has pleased the
audiences all over Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Hungary, the
USA, China and Korea, and at most prestigious festivals as are Maggio Musicale
Fiorentino, the Wiener Festwoche, the Settembre musica in Turin, the Flaneries
musicales in Rems, the French Music Festival in La Chaise Dieu, the Dubrovnik
Summer Festival, the Varaždin Baroque Evenings, the Pula Summer Festival, with the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, the City Theatre
Orchestra from Florence, the National Opera Orchestra from Monte Carlo, the Bari
Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin Youth Orchestra, the Gewandhaus Orchestra from
Leipzig, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Slovene Philharmonic Orchestra,
the Croatian Radio Television Symphony Orchestra, the Croatian Army Wind
Symphony Orchestra, under Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel, Dmitri Kitayenko, Lord
Yehudi Menuhin, Hans Graf, Pinchas Steinberg, Gustav Kuhn, Lovro von Matačić,
Milan Horvat, Kazushi Ono and Vjekoslav Šutej. The choir holds numerous
recognitions and awards, including the Rector’s Award of the Zagreb University, the
Zagreb City Award and the Vladimir Nazor Award.
Conductor Luka Vukšić (1976) was born in Zagreb. He graduated from the Josip
Hatze Music School in Split (1994) and later graduated in conducting from the Zagreb
Academy of Music under Igor Gjadrov. He was awarded the Rector’s Award for his
degree concert with the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and received the scholarship
of the Lovro and Lilly Matačić Foundation. He completed his postgraduate studies at
the Liszt Ferenz Music University in Budapest under Ervin Lukács and Tamás Gál.
He attended master courses of Ronald Zollman and Jury Simonov. Having returned to
Zagreb he has been engaged as choir leader and since April 2003 as artistic director of
the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir. He has performed with the renowned
orchestras such as the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dubrovnik Symphony
Orchestra, the Croatian Army Wind Symphony Orchestra, the Croatian Baroque
Ensemble (which he also co-founded), the Pečuh Symphony Orchestra, etc. In
November 2000 he was awarded the Ivo Vuljević Croatian Music Youth Award for
Best Young Musician. The conductor of the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir, he
adapted several major vocal-instrumental pieces including Beethoven’s Symphony No.
9, Requiems by Mozart, Verdi and Berlioz, Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 3 and 8,
Brahms’ German Requiem, Bruckner’s Te Deum, Orff’s Carmina Burana and Catuli
carmina, Weber’s opera The Freeshooter, etc. He is presently engaged in his
postgraduate studies at the Vienna Music University with Leopold Hager.
In addition to operas and oratorios, the great German master of baroque Georg
Friedrich Händel (1685-1759) also composed concertos for various instruments
(oboe, harp, etc), concerti grossi, suites, chamber music and pieces for harpsichord,
employing the music elements of German, Italian and English origin. His music
equally expresses the joy of man who freely moves in the world - on a completely
different pole from Bach’s worldview limited in the practical life – and the tragic
loftiness of an individual whose efforts do not meet the understanding of his
environment. Canticorum iubilo is a short and above all solemn fragment from
Händel’s oratory Judas Maccabaeus from 1747. The piece is performed in the Latin
translation from the original written in English language. These are specific vocal
fanfares composed in the A-B-A-B1-A form, wherein the A-fragments are energetic
and strong and B-fragments quiet and somewhat restrained. The same segment
appears in Händel’s oratory Joshua (1748).
The prolific Italian composer Allesandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), father of the brilliant
Domenico, is the most prominent representative of the transition period from the
Venetian to the Neapolitan opera school. In his operatic output (about 115 operas) he
developed and perfected the style principles of Monteverdi and his successors. His
main features are: harmony of the form, melodic elegance and application of
expressive contrast, from the restrained lyricism to the dramatic accents. He also
significantly improved the instrumental works, and the precious style elements from
the operas are also present in his chamber cantatas. Scarlatti’s vocal piece Exultate
Deo is one of the most often performed motets ever. It is composed in the A-B-C-B
form, wherein the central, quieter C-part is simple-homophonic in its first half, and
complex-polyphonic in the second part.
Italian composer Marco Antonio Ingegneri (1547-1592) was probably a pupil of
Ruffo. Since 1576 he was the music prefect in Cremona Cathedral, where he became
the Choirmaster in 1581. He taught Claudio Monteverdi and was a major
representative of the North Italian school in the last third of the 16th Century, equally
significant composer of madrigals and church music. His madrigals are marked by
sudden rhythmic changes, fine and expressive chromatics, moderate means of tonal
language and enchanting melody. In his treatment of the polyphony one can recognize
that Ingegneri was raised on the Dutch tradition. Ecce quomodo moritur is a
madrigal composed in a homophonic structure with the sound reminding of Orlando
di Lasso. Composed in the A-B-A form, the piece is filled with a quiet and sad,
mystical atmosphere in which the accords have not been completely defined. The
central part of the madrigal, enriched by the polyphony, is composed only for the
female choir.
Spanish composer Tomás Luis da Victoria (1548-1611) began to study music as a
choirboy at Ávila Cathedral; around 1565 became a pupil at the Collegium
Germanicum in Rome. From 1569 to 1574 he was a singer and organist in Rome and
since 1571 also a music teacher at the same Collegium. A bit later he succeeded
Palestrina as chaplain at the Seminarium Romanum. In 1575 he was ordained to the
priesthood and lived in seclusion as a priest of San Gerolamo della Carità Church till
1585 and since 1585 until his death was a chaplain at Descalzas Reales de S. Clara
convent in Madrid. He composed only sacral music. Out of his 20 masses, 15 are
parodies, 4 paraphrases, and only one is of free authorship. He used a distinctive
melodic system and applied the true chromatics. His harmonies are clear and certain
fragments are separated by cadenzas. He is considered one of the major Late
Renaissance masters. The authorship of Ave Maria has not been confirmed till the
present day. Its gentle and subtle, skilfully structured polyphony introduces interesting
alterations of various sound levels.
Dutch composer Jacob Arcadelt (around 1500-1568) was probably a pupil of Josquin
des Prés, because his early works are inspired by the style of that great master.
Arcadelt stayed in Italy for a long time, first (in the thirties) in Florence, than in Rome
where he was a singer (tenor) at first and from 1540 to (at the latest) 1552 the singingmaster at the Papal Chapel. His three masses were published in Paris (1557) so he
became the court conductor of cardinal Charles of Lorraine. Accompanying the
cardinal he came to the French court where he got the title regius musicus. He mainly
composed secular music, madrigals in particular (more than 200) and the French
chansons (around 120). His madrigals won him a special popularity: Book I of his
four-voice madrigals had 40 editions during his lifetime and madrigal Il bianco e
dolce is an anthology piece. His style places him among the early renaissance
madrigal composers; he regularly composed in four voices, while emphasising the
higher voice is still in connection with frottola. His harmonies are pure, diatonic, his
structure polyphonic, only at times in accords, the expression is melodious-lyrical,
and the interpretation of the text (mainly by Petrarca) is markedly poetic. Ave Maria
is a real motet masterpiece, actually a monologue of the soprano part with the
accompaniment of other voices; the polyphonically more elaborated tissue appears
only occasionally.
Russian composer Dmitry Stepanovich Bortnyansky (1751-1825) first sang in the
boys’ choir of the St. Petersburg court chapel and studied composition under Galuppi,
who at the time resided in Russia. When Galuppi left Russia, Bortnyansky got a
scholarship to follow him to Venice. He later studied in Bologna, Rome and Naples
and his operas were performed in Italy. Having returned to Russia (1779) he become
court musician at the court of the great prince Paul Petrovich, and in 1796 he was
appointed the court chapel master, which developed into a major centre of Russian
choir singing. The most talented Russian composer of the 18th Century, he composed
musical and stage works, instrumental pieces and solo songs under the Italian
influence. However, the most numerous and significant are his church pieces,
particularly the sacral a cappella concertos, in which Bortnyansky avoids frivolous
virtuosity but expresses a masterful polyphony, introduces the Ukraine folk melodies
and closely blends the word and the tone. He managed to achieve monumental effects
in his concertos for two choirs, which were suitable to aggrandize the court festivities.
His church pieces become a model for the Russian church composers until the middle
of the 19th Century. His Sacred Concerto No. 34 is a classically complex, fourmovements piece consisting of four connected miniature movements, none of which
exceeding one minute. The first (Allegro) is a quick, buoyant-solemn movement and
the second movement (Largo) is in a calm and contemplative mood. The third
movement (Andante maestoso) is a powerful and loud segment filled with heavy,
festive chords and the fourth and final movement (Allegro moderato) is a Mozartian
effective fugato, which eventually calms down and gradually disappears.
Russian composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov (18731943) is famous for his popular piano concertos and above all effective solo piano
pieces. He successfully proved his fresh and always interesting melodic and harmonic
invention in several grand church pieces among which particularly prominent are the
Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the All-Night Vigil and the motet Deus Meus. The
Blessed Virgin is a short, homophonic piece, fortified by occasional polyphonic
blocks, which give evidence of Rachmaninov’s mastery.
In 1836, the French Minister of Interior Affairs, count Gasparin, commissioned a
Requiem or High Mass for the Dead for tenor solo, choir and orchestra, Opus 5
from the young composer Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) for a fee of three thousand
francs. The piece was to be performed in 1837 at the festive concert for the victims of
the July Revolution that took place seven years before. After many troubles, because
at the time famous academician Cherubini and his followers interfered in the
commission game, the piece was first performed in October 1837, on the occasion of
the funeral of general Damermont and the French soldiers killed in the Algerian
battles, under the baton of François-Antoine Habeneck. The Requiem was met with
general acclaim by the protagonists of the Paris artistic life. The piece offers
numerous powerful, interesting contrasting moments with particularly accentuated
colour. Berlioz (like Verdi, later on) concentrates his expression power on the
dramatic image of the Last Judgement in the movement Dies irae. The text is
considered to be written by Tommaso de Celano, who died in 1250. His text was used
in even five sections of the first part of the Requiem (from Dies irae to Lacrymose).
The three great music blocks are inspired by the beginning, middle and end of this
moving poem. The humble-slow Quarens is the fifth excerpt from the Requiem with
the female choir unison singing, while the male singing parts are just a modest setting
for their meditation.
The almost twenty years long career of chapel master of Johannes Brahms (18331897) can be divided into four different periods. From 1857 to 1859 he was the
conductor of the Court Choir in Detmold and from 1859 to 1861 worked with the
Hamburg Female Choir, a small vocal group of twelve female voices that made a
great success under his firm leadership. He left this choir very reluctantly when
appointed the conductor of the Vienna Singakademie in 1863 for which he soon
composed a huge choir repertoire without instrumental accompaniment. During his
last engagement as choir leader that lasted from 1872 to 1875 he was artistic director
of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Music Lovers Society) in Vienna. When the
structure is concerned, in many of his choir pieces, Brahms continued the great
German choir tradition from H. Schutz to J. S. Bach. Like in his other works, the
vocal structure is based on the experience of the old masters (particularly those from
the periods of renaissance and baroque), but the thoughts and feelings are his own. In
this tonal tissue the rhetorical music articulation perfectly matches the distinctive
romantic rapture, which is essentially focused on the melodic, harmonic and,
generally speaking, lyrical expressive tension. While doing so, Brahms never betrays
the basic principles of a cappella choir singing: its clarity, flexibility and spontaneity.
The most successful of Brahms’ motets are those from Opus 29 (from 1864), 74 (from
1879) as well as 109 and 110 (from 1890). Brahms composed his Two motets for the
four to six voices choir without instrumental accompaniment, Opus 74, in 1863, i.e.
1877, dedicating them to Philipp Spitta. The First motet, Warum ist das Licht
gegeben dem Mühseligen (Why is the light given to the wretched man), is an
anthological piece inspired by the texts from Job (3:20-23), Laments (3.41), Jacob
(5:11) and Martin Luther. It consists of four different fragments. The slow and
expressive first fragment is a masterfully composed fugue in four voices that is two
times interrupted by the beginning and closing cadenza to the question (which haunts
the man from the beginning) Why? The slower second fragment is a four-voice
imitation that starts from the beginning two times (that is why it repeats the four first
bars), and, feeding on Bach’s symbolism, the highest tone f2 rises (and persistently
repeats) when the key words: Heaven, us and God appear. The third fragment is the
slow and docile-gentle choral in six voices (with doubled sopranos and basses) with
an expressive melody in the highest voice. It consists of two parts: while in the first
one (4/4 measure) the basic unit is the quaver, in the second one (6/4 measure) this
role is taken by the crotchet. The fourth and final fragment is a chorale consisting of
six parts with a slow ending, partially inspired by the old modes.
Owing to his instrument, the Croatian composer and famous organ player Franjo
Dugan (Sen) (1874-1948) was profoundly fond of church music, with which he was
engaged during his entire life. Following the principles of the great masters of
polyphony, Dugan had an aversion to every extreme and structure fatigue and
therefore in his distinctive motet Molitva (the Prayer) he skilfully combines
polyphony and homophony, reaching to the very core of music applying apparently
modest means.
The pupil of his father, Franjo Dugan (Jnr) (1901-1934) also an engineer employed
on the railway, was mainly engaged in vocal music and folklore. He diligently and
with a lot of taste harmonised folk melodies and later convincingly incorporated them
into his not very huge but valuable composing opus. His Zahvalnica (Thanksgiving
song) is a secular piece composed in the A-B-C-A form. Vividly and pleasingly, the
piece cheerfully celebrates the harvest, crop, vine and nature in general.
The general complexity of the theme and proved mastery of his trade that enables the
prolific Croatian composer Boris Papandopulo (1906-1991) to convincingly blend
the world and folk idiom – are the main features of his major composing period from
1930 to 1940. Inspired by the Collection of Folk Poems by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić,
Papandopulo composed his anthological Dodolice, the folk ritual for soprano solo,
girls choir and piano in 1932 and about a year later the exceptionally successful
sophisticated-lyrical short choir piece Nad grobom ljepote djevojke (The Tomb of a
Beautiful Girl) in which he achieves a perfect balance of colours equally by a careful
distribution of sections both in the homophony and polyphony. The piece is
interrupted by the interesting occasional breaks-cadences, which do not disturb the
music but give it a new power. The end of the piece is very effective with the
lingering of female voices that conjure up an impressive tonal image of the immortal
girl's soul.
The powerful personality of Croatian composer Josip Štolcer Slavenski (1896-1955)
laid the foundation of the contemporary Croatian music. Belonging to no school and
not limited in his standpoints, Slavenski foresaw almost all questions of the new
sound, finding the solutions that would in similar variants be found with other world
composers only several decades later. Among other significant ideas, there is his
conception of an all-encompassing sound synthesis regarding the space and time,
which includes the author’s distinctive affinity for the endless spaces of the universe.
There is also an individual treatment of the harmony in which the multiple definition
of the tonality rises above the Schönberg's theory of pan-tonality. Discovering some
new laws of harmony, Slavenski introduces into Croatian music the idea of the tonal
cluster almost 30 years before the appearance of the new Polish school. In his relation
to rhythm, he has a very authentic standpoint about the accident, the structural music
of coincidence; in some movements of the Orient Symphony the principle of the free
performing reaction and its mutual signalisation appear for the first time in the
modern European music, which leaves an impression of a different broken condition
of music and a new freshness of the metro-rhythmic move. The infinity of his
melodies seems to be inspired by some other civilisations; the influence of the East,
the last great announcement in the output of Josip Slavenski, is an idea that haunted
the European music of the 20th Century. The piece Voda zvira (The Water springs) is
probably the most precious jewel in the crown of his distinctive arrangements of the
original melodies from his native Međimurje.
D. Detoni