World-renowned Croatian tenor Krešimir Špicer will return to the 75th Dubrovnik Summer Festival to perform alongside pianist Lovre Marušić, who confirmed his international reputation by winning a silver medal and a special Robert Schumann Award at the prestigious International Telekom Beethoven Piano Competition 2023 in Bonn - Germany, as well as by winning a silver medal in Cleveland, USA at the 2021 Cleveland International Piano Competition.
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Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in E Major, K. 380
Giulio Caccini: Amarilli, mia bella
Antonio Lotti: Pur dicesti, o bocca bella
Giuseppe Giordani: Caro Mio Ben
Alessandro Scarlatti: Già il sole dal Gange
Robert Schumann: Arabesque in C Major, Op. 18
Franz Schubert:
An Sylvia, Op. 106: No. 4, D 891
Meeres Stille, Op. 3: No. 2, D 216
Im Frühling, Op. 101: No. 1, D 882
Abendstern, D 806
Erlkönig, Op. 1, D 328
Frédéric Chopin: Nocturne in E flat major, Op. 9, No. 2
Gabriel Fauré:
Trois poèmes d’un jour, Op. 21
Rencontre
Toujours
Adieu
A selection of songs by Croatian composers:
Božidar Kunc: Two nocturnes for piano, Op. 32
Josip Hatze: Majka (Mother)
Vatroslav Lisinski: Ribar (Fisherman)
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With this evening’s programme, renowned Croatian musicians, Krešimir Špicer and Lovre Marušić, are taking the audience on a journey through some of the staples of the solo vocal repertoire: from early arias to art songs by Schubert, Fauré, and Croatian composers. This vocal journey will be interspersed with piano miniatures.
Italian Baroque composer Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (Naples, 1685 – Madrid, 1757), son of the composer Alessandro, whose aria is on this evening’s programme, lived and worked in Italy, Spain and Portugal. He was the musical director of one of the chapels at St Peter’s in Rome, for which he wrote church music, and he also wrote several operas. In Lisbon, he served as musical director at the court of King John V and music teacher to the king’s brother Antonio and daughter Maria Bárbara. He wrote most of his harpsichord sonatas for her, and when she married the Spanish heir to the throne, the future Ferdinand VI, Scarlatti followed the couple to Spain, where he spent the rest of his life.
An unknown author described Scarlatti’s sonatas as ‘Bach's Preludes on a holiday at the Mediterranean.’ Of his 555 sonatas, in which he introduced instrumental and harmonic innovations and skilful ornamentation, ten are for violin and continuo, three are for organ and the rest are for harpsichord. Sonata K. 380 was described by pianist Ben Laude as ‘an antiphonal dialogue between imagined instruments of a courtly procession.’
Arie antiche is a collective name for early arias, mostly Baroque, i.e. arias from the first operas, although they also include late Renaissance vocal music. The education of classical singers usually begins with these arias due to their simple structure and small vocal range, which makes them suitable for practicing technique. It takes a lot of skill, however, to bring out all the beauty in them.
Amarilli is an aria from the important and innovative collection Le nuove musiche by Giulio Romulo Caccini (Rome, 1551 – Florence, 1618), written to a text by Giovanni Battista Guarini about unrequited love. Antonio Lotti (Venice, 1667 – 1740) studied music from Giovanni Legrenzi and was a singer, organist and maestro di cappella at San Marco Basilica. Pur dicesti is a text by an unknown author that begins with ‘beautiful mouth, you have finally uttered that precious “yes”.’
The popular aria Caro mio ben (‘my beloved, believe me, without you my heart languishes’) is usually attributed to the Italian composer Giuseppe Tommaso Giovanni Giordani (Naples, 1751 – Fermo, 1798), but according to some theories, the original was in fact written by Tommaso Giordani (Naples, c. 1730 – Dublin, c. 1806). Già il sole dal Gange (‘the sun over the Ganges shines more brightly’) is an aria from the opera L'honestà negli amori by Alessandro Scarlatti (Palermo, 1660 – Naples, 1725), the founder of the 18th century Neapolitan school of opera.
Robert Schumann (Zwickau, 1810 – 1856, Endenich) wrote the Arabesque and several other short pieces in Vienna in 1838, while waiting, after years of courtship, for Friedrich Wieck’s approval to marry his young daughter, the pianist Clara. The Arabesque refers to an ornament, or ornamental style, of Arabic origin, as well as a ballet position. Schumann’s delicate Arabesque is the fruit of his desire ‘to become the favourite composer of all Viennese ladies’ and a true example of entertainment music, dedicated to Frau Majorin Friederike Serre auf Maxen.
The songs of Franz Schubert (Vienna, 1797 – 1828) are a staple of the vocal repertoire. The art song, or Lied – an exquisite combination of poetry and music, with love, longing and nature as most common themes, flourished in the Romantic period. They were written by many, but Schubert’s output of over six hundred songs is one of the foundations of this musical genre.
The text of An Sylvia is a German translation of an excerpt from William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona – Schubert reportedly stumbled upon the book in a Biergarten in Vienna and was delighted by the excerpt that praises Sylvia’s beauty and honour.
Meeres Stille translates as ‘calm of the sea’. Schubert wrote the song to the text of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Im Frühling (In Spring) to the text of Ernst Konrad Schulze (‘I sit silently on the hillside, the sky is so clear’). Johann Baptist Mayrhofer wrote the text of Abendstern (Evening Star), which begins with ‘why do you linger all alone in the sky, fair star?’
Erlkönig – Elf King – is one of Schubert’s most popular songs, from 1819. It requires the singer to take on as many as four roles from Goethe’s poem, the narrator, the father, the little son and the elf who tries to kidnap the son.
Frédéric Chopin (Żelazowa Wola, 1810 – Paris, 1849) was not the first composer to write nocturnes, short character pieces inspired by the night-time atmosphere. John Field and Ferdo Livadić did it first, before Chopin developed them and made them popular. He also raised other short piano forms, previously considered parlour entertainment, to an artistic level, with his technical requirements and melodic and harmonic innovations.
Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2, is one of Chopin’s most popular nocturnes. He composed the Nocturnes, Op. 9, between 1830 and 1832, for the pianist Marie Moke-Pleyel. In No. 2, the singable, almost operatic, melody becomes more ornate as the composition progresses, in the alternation of two thematic parts, with a coda at the end. The piece inspired arrangements, such as for violin and cello.
Composer, pianist and organist Gabriel-Urbain Fauré (Pamiers, 1845 – Paris, 1924) played the organ from his youth. A blind old lady reportedly always listened to him play at a chapel in Foix and eventually informed his father about his son’s musical talent. He was an organist at the Madeleine Church in Paris, and a professor and later director at the Paris Conservatoire, where he taught Ravel, Enescu and N. Boulanger. Fauré often combined unusual harmonies and melodies with elegant, seemingly simple frame. He is best known for his art songs, over a hundred of them, but also other chamber music.
He wrote Trois poèmes d’un jour, Op. 21, to the text by Charles Grandmougin, about a journey from meeting to parting in a single day. The first songs outlines a romantic encounter (‘rencontre’), the second is a melancholic portrayal of longing, and the third brings the final ‘goodbye’.
Pianist and composer Božidar Kunc (Zagreb, 1903 – Detroit, 1964) studied piano in Zagreb under Svetislav Stančić, and composition under Blagoje Bersa. At the Academy of Music in Zagreb, he taught piano, worked as accompanist and led the Opera Studio. In 1951, he followed his sister, Zinka Kunc, a prominent prima donna, to the USA, where he mostly worked as her accompanist, but continued to compose.
Although he also wrote concerts and symphonic works, he is best known as a miniaturist, composer of art songs and piano pieces, in clear forms and in impressionist and post-impressionist style. After Chopin, we will hear how Kunc approached the ‘nocturnal’ atmosphere, both dreamy and stormy, in Two Nocturnes from 1936.
Prominent Croatian composer of vocal music, Josip Hatze (Split, 1879 – 1959) began his musical studies privately in Split, after which he graduated from the Conservatory in Pesaro. He worked in Split as a choirmaster and music teacher. During the Second World War, he led the choir of Yugoslav refugees in El Shatt, Egypt.
Hatze wrote several orchestral works, a number of cantatas and art song cycles, as well as the acclaimed operas The Return and Adel and Mara. He also wrote educational works on counterpoint and instrumentation. His works are imbued with the melodic musicality of the Mediterranean, within the framework of late Romantic tonality, influenced by verismo and with an occasional use of folk elements. He wrote the two-part poem Mother to the text of Hugo Badalić (‘I don’t know what it’s like to have a mother…’) about the transience of life (‘Does death care for heartache?’).
Although the composer Vatroslav Lisinski (Ignatius Fux / Fuchs, Zagreb, 1819 – 1854) is considered ‘the founder of modern Croatian opera, art song, choral and orchestral music and the first Slavic opera composer after Glinka’, he spent a large part of his short life disappointed because he was not able to make a career in music.
He studied philosophy and law in Zagreb and served as a notary at the Court of Appeal in Zagreb. He started learning music privately, and composed from 1841, at the persuasion of Albert Štriga. He wanted to study at the Prague Conservatory, but was too old to enrol, so he took private lessons in composition at the Prague Organ School. He was not even able to get a job as a teacher at the school of the Croatian Music Institute, so he volunteered there as an administrator. He gave piano lessons and worked as a court intern.
He wrote the playful song The Fisherman to the allegorical text of Petar Preradović ‘Crazy fish, come here (...) The thin hook is so soft and sweet!’
Krešimir Špicer (b. Slavonski Brod, 1976) graduated in singing from the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam under Cora Canne Meijer. In 1997, he won the Vriendenkrans International Competition organised by Concertgebouw Amsterdam, while his performance at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (2000) – where he interpreted the title role in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d' Ulisse in patria, alongside the Les Arts Florissants ensemble conducted by William Christie – earned him international renown. This success was followed by Špicer's international tour and his acclaimed DVD release. From then onwards, Špicer has appeared on a regular basis at the most renowned opera houses (Geneva, Frankfurt, Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin, Toronto, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, Milan etc.), concert halls and festivals (Beaune, Baden-Baden, Salzburg, Schwetzingen, Luxembourg, Amsterdam, Verbier, Aix-en-Provence, New York, Edinburgh, etc.).
He has collaborated with world renowned conductors such as Kent Nagano, Yuri Temirkanov, Philippe Herreweghe, Myung-whun Chung, Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs, Fabio Luisi, Herbert Blomstedt, Thomas Henglebrock, Sir Simon Rattle, Zubin Mehta, Diego Fasolis, Franz Welser-Möst, Cornelius Meister etc.
Špicer‘s internationally acclaimed interpretations have included those in operas such as Handel’s Alcina and Tamerlano, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Mozart’s Il re pastore, La clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo, Lucio Silla and La finta Giardiniera, Scarlatti’s Telemaco, Salieri’s La grotta di Trofonio, Strauss’s Die ägyptische Helena, Stravinsky’s The Nightingale and Oedipus Rex, Cavalli’s La Didone and Haydn’s Orlando paladino. Worth mentioning among those released on DVD are Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Virgin Classics), Mozart’s Il re pastore (Deutsche Grammophon), Charpentier’s David et Jonathas (Bel Air Classiques), Cavalli's La Didone (Opus Arte), Handel’s Theodora (Erato), Mozart’s Lucio Silla and Le Nozze di Figaro (C major, RAI Com) recorded in La Scala Milan, where Krešimir also appeared in G. F Handel’s, Tamerlano, R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, J. Strauss’s Die Fledermaus etc.
Equally dedicated to concert appearances, Špicer has sung at Gewandhaus Leipzig under the baton of Herbert Blomstedt, Concertgebouw Amsterdam with Christian Zacharias, in Rome with Yuri Temirkanov, in Paris and Rome with Myung-whun Chung, in Berlin with Kent Nagano, in St Petersburg, Tallinn and Riga with Philippe Herreweghe, and in Strasbourg with Carlo Rizzi.
Špicer’s most recent engagements include Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Toulouse Opera, a singing seminar at the Paris Conservatoire and a tour with Les Arts Florissants, with Händel’s Ariodante. His future projects include Boris Godunov at the Avignon Opera, a tour with Les Musiciens du Louvre with J. Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, R. Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre de Champs Élysées Paris etc.
Lovre Marušić (b. Omiš, 1992) confirmed his international reputation by winning a silver medal and a special Robert Schumann Award at the prestigious International Telekom Beethoven Competition Bonn in 2023, and a silver medal at the Cleveland International Piano Competition in 2021. He has won numerous prizes at prestigious piano competitions, including first prizes at the 20th Santa Cecilia International Competition in Porto (2018), the IMF Paris, as well as first prize, jury prize and audience prize at the Isidor Bajić International Piano Competition in Novi Sad, Serbia (2016).
He received his first piano lessons from Professor Rozarija Samodol in his hometown of Omiš. At the invitation of the distinguished Russian pianist Natalia Troull, in 2006 he went to Moscow to study at the Central Music School at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, where he graduated in 2011. He studied at the Zagreb Academy of Music under Ruben Dalibaltayan and Ljubomir Gašparović, under whom he graduated. He continues his studies at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar under Grigory Gruzman. He has also received the Rector’s and Dean’s Awards of the University of Zagreb for outstanding achievements as a student.
He has appeared with prominent orchestras and chamber ensembles such as The Cleveland Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, the Zagreb Philharmonic, the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra, the Belgrade Symphony Orchestra, the Irkustsk Philharmonic Orchestra, the Croatian National Theatre Split Symphony Orchestra, the Escher String Quartet New York, the Beethoven Trio Bonn, the Zagreb Soloists and the Split Soloists.
As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed at festivals and in concert series throughout Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Russia, France and the USA. He is currently an assistant at the Academy of Music in Zagreb, the Department of Piano, Organ and Harpsichord, and artistic director of the Ostinato International Chamber Music Festival in Omiš, Croatia.
In the 2023/24 season, he toured China, and with the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra and maestro Daniel Raiskin; he gave recitals and performed in Italy, Austria, Germany, Portugal, Spain and throughout Croatia at prestigious festivals, with prominent orchestras and in major concert halls.
Lovre Marušić is represented by CristoforiumArt.
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Lovre Marušić (c) Marin Frka
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