A great chamber music combination of the Zagreb Soloists and Marija Pavlović

In its 74^th season, the Dubrovnik Summer Festival reunited the renowned string ensemble the Zagreb Soloists and the virtuoso clarinettist Marija Pavlović, who performed again on the festival stage in the Rector’s Palace atrium together last night, 18 July, after twenty-four years, and delighted the audience with a great chamber concert to boot.

The evening began with Felix Mendelssohn's magical composition A Midsummer Night's Dream – Overture, inspired by the iconic Shakespeare comedy of the same name, of fluttering notes with which the Zagreb Soloists captivated the audience at the Palace from the very beginning. After the dance Divertimento, No. 1, Op. 20 by Leo Weiner and its dazzling beats of a traditional Hungarian spirit, the clarinet of virtuoso Marija Pavlović shined in Bruno Bjelinski's Clarinet Concerto. The high technical and performance quality of the Dubrovnik-born clarinettist blended brilliantly with the equally skilful string ensemble, soon celebrating seventy years of successful activity, and made up of excellent musicians led by concertmaster and renowned violinist Sreten Krstić. The flawless clarinettist treated the enthusiastic audience to Piazzolla's Oblivion in this hot Dubrovnik evening, as she said at the concert. The second part of the programme brought Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's classic, Serenade for Strings in C major, Op. 48, his homage to Mozart and nod to the serenades of previous generations. The audience rewarded the brilliant string players with loud applause, after which they played two encores – the technically challenging Erlkönig by Franz Schubert, a work inspired by Goethe's poem of the same name, which is regarded as one of the key compositions of the nineteenth century in general, and then the last movement of Haydn's Symphony no. 88 sent off the grateful audience with a cheerful rondo.

The 74^th Festival music programme continues tonight and tomorrow with #synergy Festival Tour concerts in the Rector’s Palace atrium at 9:30 p.m., where new compositions inspired by the Western Balkans local heritage and European values, written for this occasion by young regional composers, will be performed. Admission to both concerts is free, while tickets for other concerts are available via the festival website www.dubrovnik-festival.hr or the service www.ulaznice.hr, at the box office in the Festival Palace (Od Sigurate 1) every day from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and in front of the DTS building (Vukovarska St) from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.