• Davorin Mori is one of the most successful Slovenian conductors of the younger generation, he lives in Vienna and is currently assistant choirmaster to Thomas Lang at the Vienna State Opera
• The conductor made his breakthrough in 2016 when he conducted Karen Asatrian’s Prayer Wheel mass at the opening of the Salzburg Festival
• In 2018, he founded the Camerata Sinfonica Austria orchestra, in the spirit and following the ideas of Arnold Schönberg, who founded the Association for Private Musical Concerts in Vienna in 1918
• In 1962, Lojze Lebič was awarded the Prešeren Student Prize for his orchestral work Simfonietta
• In 1972, Lojze Lebič won first prize at the BBC international Let the Peoples Sing Competition in London
• Lojze Lebič’s symphonic work November Songs was one of the ten most successful works at the Rostrum of Composers, IMC UNESCO, Paris in 1985

Programme:
L. Lebič: Music for orchestra – Cantico I
L. Lebič: Music for orchestra – Cantico II
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L. Lebič: Voices for strings, percussion and plucked-string instruments
L. Lebič: Overture for three instrumental groups

“Art does not express beauty merely for emotional solace, but stirs our most contemplative organ, our imagination.” This is how the critic Eduard Hanslick described the role of music in our lives. These words also define the main purpose that can be fulfilled by music criticism, which is the main theme of the 37th Slovenian Music Days. When the critic employs objective qualitative criteria to make an evaluation, he or she can also interpret the role of music in society at large. Moreover, as Theodor Adorno more keenly noted, the critic is supposed to be a particularly perceptive listener who recognises the interplay of historical moments and aesthetic shifts in music. That is why this year’s musical event seeks to broaden the dialogue between the composer and his or her audience through a special selection of novelties and performances of
musical masterpieces of key historical moments. Music criticism is right in the middle of this. The opening of this year’s Celebration of Slovenian Music will be marked by the compositional metaphysics of the composer Lojze Lebič. In cooperation with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Lebič’s most extensive work for symphony orchestra – the diptych Music for Orchestra – Cantico I  and  II – will be heard in its entirety for the first time. The composer arranged the musical material according to the principles of numerical symbolism, which represent the earthly and spiritual planes of existence in the stars, wind, water, fire, earth and death. This is why the diptych has a total of seven movements, whose content relates to cosmic completeness. The composer drew inspiration for it from Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creation. If the first part of the programme speaks to us with Lebič’s intimately inspired poetics, after the interval we are confronted with his more radical modernist language. This speaks through Voices – music for string orchestra, percussion and plucked-string instruments, driven by an innovative array of musical components. In addition to the pitches, which the composer arranged in a twelve-tone series, quarter tones, glissandi, sound clusters and murmurs are all defined as equivalent musical elements. In the end, the cycle brings us back to the period when the composer questioned the boundaries of over-regulated and cold-blooded modernism, and invented a unique musical flow that acts as a living contact with the listeners. Ironically, therefore, the evening concludes with the Overture for three instrumental groups, commissioned by the Zagreb Biennial, returning to Lebič’s characteristically spiritual musical language. The latter is interpreted by Davorin Mori, incisive Slovenian conductor of the younger generation.

The presentation of the diptych Cantico I and Cantico II by Lojze Lebič will be available before the concert in the form of the podcast The Day before the Concert of the Ars programme at the web address ars.rtvslo.si/podkasti and mobile applications for podcasts.