5 November – 1 December 2009
About Festival
The 5th Festival of Croatian Music in Vienna
As we all know, the Mozartkugel is a world known Austrian brand. The name and likeness of the brilliant Salzburg composer have been applied to a chocolate confection that make the bags and suitcases of tourists returning from Austria always that little bit fuller and heavier. We have here turned that “little round economic miracle” into a cube, replicated it Warhol-style and coloured it in red and white: thus we have created a completely new kind, a new species. These are genetically modified Mozart balls, crosses, mutants with double gene lines. On the one had there are the red and white square fields from the historical Croatian coat of arms, and on the other the identifiable and original characteristics of der echten Mozartkugeln have been retained; thus we have obtained cubes that are, paradoxically Mozartkugeln alla Croata.
Of course, all this sweet pseudo-genetics is a joke, but behind the merging of the two symbols, the two brands into a single unit there is a small and covert but very well-meaning intention. It has been done primarily so that at first glance everyone should be aware that this is about music, music with a Croatian aroma. An equally important reason for this fusion is that the festival is being put on for the fifth year running in the prestigious concert venues of the city of Vienna; as a rule it offers ten prime concerts of classical, original traditional and jazz or pop music, all thanks to the excellent relations of the two countries, the wonderful gesture and great help of our genuine friends the Austrians. During the years the festival has genuinely become a kind of Austrian-Croatian but also Vienna-cum-Zagreb cultural treat in which (unlike sport in which someone always tends to lose) everyone gains. Croatia gets the chance proudly to exhibit its fine music tradition in the concert halls of Vienna, and the Austrian public the chance to enjoy the music and discover the culture of a country that it knows on the whole as a place to go in the summer for its marvellous sea, sun and enjoyment.
The festival of Croatian music this year, in terms of what musical artists are providing, constitutes perhaps the best in the sequence of festivals to date. The Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and the Zagreb String Quartet are some of the oldest and most prestigious of Croatian ensembles; the Zagreb Guitar Quartet, the Matija Dedić Trio, the Kastav male voice a cappella group are top musicians in their kinds and genres that delight audiences worldwide. Martina Filjak is a new star of the world pianistic firmament (she won the 1st prize at the Cleveland International Piano Competition, 2009, the 1st prize at the Concurso Internacional de Música Maria Canals Barcelona and so on) while Ivan Repušić is the most striking Croatian conductor of the younger generation, with an international reputation. We invite you during the festival to listen to the brilliant percussionist, Ivana Bilić the marimba player, the excellent clarinettist Domagoj Pavlović, to revel in the original “Hispano-Mediterranean-Balkan” evening of the explosive rhythms of pianists Matej Meštrović and Kristina Bjelopavlović and percussionist Borna Šercar as well as to surrender to the magic the of the art of Petrit Çeku, without any exaggeration one of the most impressive young guitarists in the world. The excellent organist Mirta Kudrna at the great organ of St Peter’s in the heart of Vienna will interpret Croatian and other organ compositions, and just a day after that the Orchestra of the Music Academy in Zagreb will perform religious and secular music there, the young soprano Martina Burger singing under the leadership of the brilliant English violinist and expert in Baroque music Catherine Mackintosh. In the famed Viennese jazz club Porgy & Bess we shall have the chance to relish the refined jazz interpretations and wonderful, velvet, impasto voice of an icon of Croatian pop music culture, Massimo Savić, as well as the somewhat younger and exceptionally gifted all-round musician the singer Kristijan Beluhan. The festival will close with a concert in the ORF Kulturhaus: the whole evening will be dedicated to the sadly early deceased cult Croatian woman composer who played a considerable role in the intellectual circles of the onetime Austro-Hungarian Empire (such intellectual giants as Rainier Maria Rilke and Karl Kraus were among her friends and admirers), Dora Pejačević. The consummate young artists Ivana Kladarin, Danijel Detoni and Luka Šulić will familiarise the audience with her chamber compositions and her songs, full of passion, melancholy and genuine poetry. The other concerts will provide an on the whole international programme, and the festival will provide a kind of tribute to a composer who is being particularly celebrated this year, Joseph Haydn, in a concert by the Zagreb Quartet; and here too there will of course be plenty of music by Croatian composers.
Don’t forget to try out our Mozarkugeln all Croata then. Welcome to the 5th Festival of Croatian Music in Vienna. We’ll be very glad to see you at every one of our eleven concerts.
Davor Merkaš