RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra - Kromatika 7

Slovenian Philharmonic Choir
Jerica Bukovec, choirmaster

Program:
Claude Debussy, Trois nocturnes for female choir and orchestra, L. 91
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Franz Liszt, Dante Symphony, S. 109
 

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) generously incorporated exotic musical elements into the European musical tradition and successfully wove them into French Romanticism, thus creating musical impressionism. With his orchestral and piano compositions, he explored instrumental colours and harmonies, which he used to paint the most subtle emotions and scenes from the phenomenal world in a uniquely effective way. His Trois nocturnes paint clouds, a festival and sea nymphs, respectively. In the last of the three musical paintings, he added female voices to the colourful sound of the orchestra, further strengthening the association with the dangerous mythological seducers from the sea waves.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, Franz Liszt (1811-1886) breathed the freshness of new concepts and new sonorities into the symphonic music of the Beethoven tradition, which has its roots deep in the eighteenth century. He conceived and developed the symphonic poem as a new format of orchestral composition, which, in a single but extensive movement, exploits the colourful and flexible ensemble of the symphony orchestra to paint programmatic sonic landscapes and narratives. The Dante Symphony, based on Dante’s Divine Comedy, is halfway between a symphony and a symphonic poem – it consists of two extensive movements, which can be understood as corresponding to Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory. This rather dark work is concluded by an optimistic Magnificat, in which the sound of the orchestra is complemented by “heavenly” voices.

The RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Rossen Milanov, will be joined on this occasion by the female singers of the Slovenian Philharmonic Choir, the only professional concert choir in Slovenia. The singers will be prepared by the permanent guest choirmaster of the Slovenian Philharmonic, Jerica Bukovec.