Important information
The concert of songs by Saša Šantel, interpreted by Nika Gorič (soprano), Jaka Mihelač (baritone) and Andreja Kosmač (piano), will be preceded by a presentation of Šantel’s work featuring guest speakers familiar with his oeuvre.
This year marks 80 years since the death of a versatile Slovene artist and musician whose artistic and musical works still represent an indispensable contribution to Slovenia’s cultural panorama. Saša Šantel is remembered above all as the artist responsible for the monumental group portrait of Slovene composers that hangs in the Slovenian Philharmonic Hall. Yet the rest of his extraordinarily rich and interesting painterly and compositional oeuvre is equally deserving of attention. As an artist, Šantel worked in various techniques, including oil, watercolour, drawing, ink, gouache and printmaking. He drew 139 pencil portraits of Slovene musicians for the Glasbena Matica in Ljubljana and, for the same client, created his largest work – the oil painting The Council of Slovene Music (1936), which adorns the small hall of the Slovenian Philharmonic Hall. Between 1932 and 1942 he painted a series of watercolours of folk costumes, illustrated books, and exhibited frequently.
He was also a composer, who began composing music at a young age. His diverse oeuvre consists of around a hundred works, half of which are for voices – from choruses and cantatas to numerous art songs and sacred works. He also composed a large number of chamber and solo works, above all for strings and piano, a few works for symphony orchestra and salon orchestra, and three works for the stage. Several of Šantel’s instrumental compositions are of a didactic nature, while many of his choruses evoke national consciousness. His most extensive work is the operetta Blejski zvon (The Bled Bell), with a libretto by Mary Garden, which was staged in 1933 at the Ljubljana Opera but did not enjoy lasting success. In terms of concert performances, Šantel’s chamber works have proved more enduring, in particular his art songs, a selection of which we will hear as part of this year’s 39th Slovenian Music Days.
“Šantel belongs to the generation of Slovene composers who created music in a spirit of national fervour, while also striving to elevate their work above the patriotic reading-room context to the higher level of national schools of European music, and dedicated themselves on a greater scale to purely instrumental music, at that time still relatively poorly developed in Slovenia. Although an amateur and in many respects self-taught, Šantel refined his craft to a point that enabled him to encompass all areas of compositional technique, at least to some extent. He moves between the classicism of the Viennese school, early Romanticism and folk music in the direction of a national school, following the model of composers from other Slav nations. He composed from a heartfelt need to make music and his strength lies above all in his clear, simple and inventive melodies that retain a folk-like quality.” (Čopič, J., Hrovatin, R.: Šantel, Saša. Slovenska biografija. ZRC SAZU, 2013.)
Tomaž Gržeta