Festival Ljubljana is organising the traditional, 36th Slovenian Music Days, which will be held from 19 to 24 April in the Knights’ Hall at Križanke, the Philharmonic Hall and Cankarjev Dom.  This celebration of Slovenian music combines contemporary musical composition and performing, featuring not only compositions from the core repertoire of our musical treasure chest, but also those that lie forgotten in the music archives. The Slovenian Music Days encourage reflection and the search for new routes into music, presenting new discoveries, offering alternative views and inviting a meeting of different opinions. The main focus of this year’s Music Days is one of Slovenia’s main musical institutions, the Glasbena Matica Ljubljana, which is celebrating its 150th jubilee. An International Musicological Symposium will be held under the artistic direction of Jernej Weiss, bringing together recognised Slovenian and foreign musicologists from Europe’s top universities. This year it bears the title Musical associations in the long 19th century: between amateur and professional culture, and it will address comparable international societal activity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Tickets are available for purchase online at ljubljanafestival.si or at the Križanke box office, service stations of the Petrol Group and other Eventim ticket outlets.

Opening of the 36th Slovenian Music Days – marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of Glasbena Matica Ljubljana

The homogeneous programme of this year’s Slovenian Music Days, with its six concerts, clearly expresses the central theme of the functioning of the Glasbena Matica Ljubljana. The opening concert has been inspired by the first high-profile concert of Ljubljana’s Glasbena Matica Choir abroad in 1896. Its grandeur will be re-enacted by former students of Ljubljana’s Academy of Music who are now the distinguished Slovenian soloists Mojca Bitenc Križaj, Nuška Drašček, Martin Sušnik and Peter Martinčič, the Glasbena Matica and Academy of Music choirs directed by Sebastjan Vrhovnik and Alenka Podpečan, and the Academy’s Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the versatile Simon Dvoršak.
(19 April, 7.30 pm, Cankarjev Dom)

Concert Atelier of the Slovene Composers’ Society

One of the essential elements of the Slovenian Music Days is undoubtedly the Society of Slovene Composers, which ever since the end of World War II has ensured the production of modern Slovenian music and the promotion of Slovenian composers, thereby preserving the quality and reputation of Slovenian music both at home and abroad. The society’s oldest event is the chamber series Concert Workshop. This year it will feature a performance in the Knights’ Hall at Križanke on 20 April by two internationally acclaimed virtuosos: trumpet player Franc Kosem and Jože Bogolin, member of the famous percussion duo Drumartica.

(20 April at 7.30 pm, Knights’ Hall, Križanke)

Slovene Composers’ Night

Following the example of the Viennese Lange Nacht der Musik, another manifestation of Slovenian musical modernity has taken shape under the auspices of the Society of Slovene Composers in the form of the Night of Slovene Composers, which has become a regular event in performative creativity, intended exclusively for the first performances of Slovenian composers from different generations, schools and styles. The event as such is always a colourful mixture of different formal, compositional and technical solutions, and of the aesthetic principles of current Slovenian composers. The works of fifteen composers will be performed on 21 April in the Knights’ Hall at Križanke by acknowledged Slovenian musicians, while brass instruments will take pride of place in solo performances accompanied by piano.

(21 April at 7.00 pm, Knights’ Hall, Križanke)

Lieder

On 22 April the Philharmonic Hall will host the already traditional concert event Cycle of Lieder, whose carefully prepared programmes, season after season, uncover not only the infinite wealth of the world’s treasure trove of songs, but also highlight the important role played by Lieder in the development of Slovenian music. This will eloquently be displayed in the evening of Lieder at the 36th Slovenian Music Days, by baritone Jaka Mihelač, who is making his career abroad, and Andreja Kosmač, an acclaimed pianist who is particularly devoted to chamber music.

(22 April at 7.30 pm, Philharmonic Hall)

 Nika Gorič and Ensemble Dissonance

Further historical references to the concerts performed by Glasbena Matica Ljubljana in the interwar period will be provided by the Ensemble Dissonance concert programme (23 April), which will be joined by soprano Nika Gorič, who is gaining recognition on international concert hall and opera stages. The programme will include compositions by two exceptional musical figures, the outstanding violinist and teacher Karel Jeraj, and the composer, professor and former rector of the Academy of Music, Lucijan Marija Škerjanc. The compositions that will be performed in this concert have been transformed into a contemporary musical style by the founder and artistic director of Ensemble Dissonance, Klemen Hvala. Thanks to their concerts, music teaching and organisational work, Jeraj and Škerjanc left an indelible mark on the functioning of the two main musical institutions in the interwar period, the Glasbena Matica Orchestral Society and the Conservatory of the Glasbena Matica.

(23 April at 8.00 pm, Knights’ Hall, Križanke)

Closing of the 36th Slovenian Music Days

The concluding concert, devised in the spirit of the most prominent musical forms of Gallus’ time (mass, motet and madrigal) on 24 April in the Philharmonic Hall, will unveil rarely heard works from the composer’s rich and extensive opus. It was actually an extremely successful concert of Gallus’s works on 9 June 1892 in the Redutna dvorana hall, performed by the Glasbena Matica Choir under the direction of Matej Hubad, that triggered a renaissance of Gallus’s works. It is a less well known fact that to acquire the sheet music, the Glasbena Matica’s committee turned to the secretary of the history department at the University of Vienna and the pioneer of musicology in Slovenia Josip Mantuani, who was already carrying out intensive research into Gallus’s compositional legacy at the time. Performing Gallus’s characteristic and often daring compositions, the Slovenian Philharmonic Choir conducted by the Academy-trained church musician, organist and choirmaster Gregor Klančič, will round off the 36th Slovenian Music Days, dedicated to Ljubljana’s Glasbena Matica. Slovenian Music Days.

(24 April at 7.30 pm, Philharmonic Hall)

International Musicological Symposium

As part of the 36th Slovenian Music Days, the International Musicological Symposium will be held under the artistic direction of Jernej Weiss. This year it will bear the title Musical associations in the long 19th century: between amateur and professional culture, and its particular focus will be on comparable international societal activity in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The musicological symposium expands horizons through papers presented by internationally acclaimed musicologists from renowned European universities.

(21 and 22 April, Knights’ Hall, Križanke)

Thank you for your interest in the Ljubljana Festival programme.

Festival Ljubljana reserves the right to modify the programme.

More information at ljubljanafestival.si. 

Information / Public relations

Maruša Šinkovič
Tel.: +386 (0)1 241 60 18
marusa.sinkovic@ljubljanafestival.si

Živa Steiner
Tel.: +386 (0)1 241 60 08
ziva.steiner@ljubljanafestival.si

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The founder of Festival Ljubljana is the City of Ljubljana, which also provides financial support:

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General sponsor: Zavarovalnica Sava, d. d.
General media sponsor: Delo, d.o.o.
The founder of the Ljubljana Festival is the City of Ljubljana. Member of the European Festivals Association (EFA) since 1977.