--
The world-renowned ensemble of the Zagreb Soloists returns to the Rector's Palace in Dubrovnik, and in the performance of Astor Piazzolla's 4 Seasons, the ensemble will be led and soloed by Moldovan violinist Alexandra Conunova. The Zagreb soloists will also perform P.I. Tchaikovsky's 'Souvenirs de Florence' as well as Croatian composer Margareta Ferek Petric's 'Eat the Rich'.
--
PROGRAMME:
Petar Iljič Čajkovski: Souvenir de Florence
_______
Margareta Ferek-Petrić: Eat the rich! (Bad politics Part I)
Ástor Piazzolla: Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas
Primavera porteña
Verano porteño
Otoño porteño
Ivierno porteño
Alexandra Conunova, violin
--
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Votkinsk, 1840 – St. Petersburg, 1893) is considered by many to be the quintessential composer of the Romantic Era, as well as the most romantic of composers. His music is characterized by a wealth of melodies and colours, dramatic intensity, careful orchestration, and strict form with national elements. While its broad strokes are perceived as the sound of the ‘Russian soul’, Tchaikovsky considered beauty to be the most important thing in music. Of French descent on his mother’s side and Ukrainian-Cossack on his father’s, he studied to be a civil servant, and then began his music studies at the Russian Musical Society. It became the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where Tchaikovsky studied composition under Anton Rubinstein. He then taught at the Moscow Conservatory; while the important Russian composers of the time were self-taught, Tchaikovsky distinguished himself by his professionalism, as well as by his refusal to permanently align himself with ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’ composers.
His life was strongly influenced by his friendship with Nadezhda von Meck, who commissioned works from him and later supported him financially when he left his position at the Conservatory. They exchanged more than a thousand letters, agreeing never to meet in person. During his lifetime, Tchaikovsky experienced both popularity in Russia, although many of his works were initially lukewarmly received, and recognition abroad: in 1891, the author of the programme booklet for New York’s Carnegie Hall called him, Brahms, and Saint-Saëns the greatest living musicians. Tchaikovsky wrote symphonies, which reflect all the most famous elements of his style, as well as operas, ballets, three piano concertos, Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra, the Violin Concerto; he also wrote pieces for orchestra, piano, cantatas and choirs, songs, and chamber music.
After string quartets, a piano trio, and several other pieces, the Sextet, Op. 70 – Souvenir de Florence, was his last chamber work (1890, revised in 1892). Numerous letters to his brothers and friends reveal that he struggled with the sextet, claiming that he could not ‘get rid’ of the quartet, writing for the first time for six independent, yet homogeneous voices, which was ‘unimaginably difficult’. Extremely dissatisfied, Tchaikovsky revised parts of the Sextet several times and created a dense and powerful work, marked by his orchestral approach and the expressive cantilena in the second movement, the occasionally elegiac Allegretto, and the lively fugue in the finale. Inspired by Italy and his enjoyable stay in Florence, but more ‘Russian’ in sound, the piece was dedicated to the St. Petersburg Chamber Music Society.
Croatian composer Margareta Ferek-Petrić (Zagreb, 1982) has lived and worked in Vienna since 2002, where she studied composition with Iván Erőd, Klaus Peter Sattler and Chaya Czernowin at the University of Music and Performing Arts. She has received a number of scholarships and awards, including the Förderungspreis – the City of Vienna Award, the Theodor Körner Award and the Austrian SKE Fund Award. She won second prize and the audience award for her music at the Prix Annelie de Man in the Netherlands, and she is also the winner of the two most important Croatian music awards: Josip Štolcer Slavenski and Boris Papandopulo.
In addition to composing, Margareta Ferek-Petrić was the artistic director of the Music Biennale Zagreb (2019–2023), and in 2025 she works as part of the team of artistic advisors for the Wonderfeel Festival in the Netherlands. She also serves as a member of the music advisory board of the Goethe Institute in Munich (since 2021) and is active in numerous international juries. Her works are regularly commissioned and performed by renowned international festivals as well as acclaimed interpreters of contemporary music around the world.
Margareta’s music is characterised by impulsiveness and expressive constructions that explore the connection between the refined, the sensual and the abstract. Emotional, theatrical and experimental narratives permeate her compositions, as well as an emphasis on a critical view of the world through (self-)irony and humour. She draws inspiration for her music from literature, art, film, satire, science, politics, philosophy, exceptional individuals or bizarre life situations.
Here is what she wrote about her piece Eat the Rich! (Bad Politics Part I):
‘The inspiration for this piece comes from the current economic situation and the fact that modern civilization is constantly making destructive political decisions. Recalling famous 18th-century phrases like “Let them eat cake” and “Eat the rich”, with this piece I am in a way signing surrender and admitting to feeling helpless in the face of global events.
On the one hand, we have a political slogan associated with anti-capitalism and far-left politics. It can be used in various ways, as a metaphor for class conflict, a demand for the redistribution of wealth, or as a literal call to violence. The phrase is usually attributed to the political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from a quote first popularized during the French Revolution: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” On the other hand, we have the traditional translation of the French phrase “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, which is said to have been uttered in the 18th century by a “great princess” after being told that the peasants have no bread. The phrase is usually attributed to Marie Antoinette, who was nine years old at the time and had never been to France, but it was not attributed to her until decades after her death and it is unlikely that she ever uttered it. The phrase appears in the sixth book of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiographical Confessions, but Rousseau does not name the “great princess”, and may have invented the anecdote, as the Confessions are not considered a fully factual work. While inflation inevitably continues to affect everyday life, I have no better solution than to comment on the situation through music, question my own views and show the middle finger to everyone who could positively influence various political decisions, but chooses not to.
In the meantime, I have continued the Bad Politics series, and so far there is also Part II & Part III and, unfortunately, I see no reason for this series to end in the near future.’
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (Mar del Plata, 1921 – Buenos Aires, 1992) was born in Argentina, and later lived with his family in New York’s Little Italy. Although he listened to American jazz and pop there, he remained in touch with Argentine music by playing the popular bandoneón – a type of accordion popular in Argentina and Uruguay, invented in Germany in the 19th century by Heinrich Band. From 1936 to 1944, he played in a tango orchestra in Buenos Aires, but he was also interested in classical music: he met Arthur Rubinstein, who encouraged him to study with his future teacher, Alberto Ginastera. Piazzolla continued his studies in Paris with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who urged him to return to tango. After returning to Argentina, Piazzolla created a unique combination of tango, jazz and classical music, later called tango nuevo, moving away from the traditional sound. This new genre was well received around the world, but initially it angered Argentine traditionalists. Piazzolla wrote more than 750 complex pieces tinged with tango, which for him, as he said, ‘was always for the ear rather than the feet’.
Piazzolla did not conceive the Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas / The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires as a programme piece, he did not write sonnets like (perhaps) Vivaldi did for his Four Seasons, and he did not in fact write these four pieces as a whole (although he sometimes performed them together). They were composed over a longer period, from 1964 to 1970, for Piazzolla’s Quinteto Tango Nuevo (violin, guitar, piano, double bass, bandoneón). The Spanish adjective porteño refers to something, or someone, from a port city, but most often to something, or someone, from Buenos Aires.
He wrote Verano porteño / Summer first, in 1964, as incidental music for the piece Melenita de oro, then, a few years later, Otoño porteño / Autumn, opened to improvisations, with strong accents and contemplative middle part, then the sorrowful Invierno porteño / Winter, whose frozen sadness is interrupted by a fast tango, and finally the nostalgic, sometimes dark, Primavera porteña / Spring. Piazzolla’s The Seasons have been frequently arranged; the version for the violin and orchestra was written in 1999 by Leonid Desyatnikov, born in Kharkiv in 1955, a conductor and composer of operas, cantatas and film music, who often collaborates with Gidon Kremer.
In The Seasons and elsewhere, Piazzolla’s tango for strings is characterized by several playing effects, such as the chicharra, ‘cricket’, produced by firmly scraping a string on its lower part below the bridge, or a type of glissando known as latigo, and pizzicato as an ornament before the stressed beat. In his arrangement, Desyatnikov also adopts the often used technique col legno battuto, in which the strings use the wooden part of the bow to produce a percussive sound.
--
