Trio Elogio | Ivana Srbljan, mezzo - soprano

Trio Elogio 

Petrit Çeku, guitar

Pedro Ribeiro Rodrigues, guitar

Tomislav Vukšić, guitar

Ivana Srbljan, mezzo-soprano 

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Las Locas por Amor 

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PROGRAMME:

Clara Schumann: Romance no. 1, op. 11 (arr.: Petrit Çeku)

Robert Schumann: Kinderszenen / Scenes from Childhood, op. 15 (arr: Petrit Çeku)

Enrique Granados: 4 Tonadillas (arr.: Darko Petrinjak)
1. Descúbrase el pensamiento (from: Canciones amatorias / Love songs)
2. El majo olvidado (from: Tonadillas en un estilo antiguo / Tonadllas in the old style)
3. La maja dolorosa No. 1: ¡Oh muerte cruel! (from: Tonadillas en un estilo antiguo / Tonadllas in the old style)
4. Gracia mia (from: Canciones amatorias / Love songs)

Dubravko Detoni: Devet prizora iz Danijelova sna / Scenes from Danijel's dream (arr.: Darko Petrinjak)

Joaquín Turina: Poema en forma de canciones / Poem in the form of songs op. 19 (arr: Darko Petrinjak)
I. Dedicatoria
II. Nunca olvida
III. Cantares
IV. Los dos miedos
V. Las locas por amor

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The title of this evening’s concert, Mad for Love, is borrowed from the song Las locas por amor. It was written by the Spanish composer Joaquín Turina to a text by Ramón de Campoamor y Campoosorio, and it concludes this evening’s programme. The song is a dialogue – a man tells a divinely beautiful maiden that, if she so wishes, he can love her ‘for a long time and sensibly’. She replies: ‘I would rather, like all women, be loved briefly, and madly!’ (In doing so, he may be breaking the stereotype commonly found in songs, that everything about women is gentle and delicate. But, some will say, everything is different in Spain.). This programme of musical love will certainly seem too short, just like mad love. Its brief madness is conveyed through the works of the following composers, performed by a guitar trio and voice and adapted by experienced arrangers, guitarists Darko Petrinjak and Petrit Çeku:

Enrique [Enríc] Granados y Campiña (Lérida [Lleida], 1867 – English Channel, 1916) was a largely self-taught composer, although he briefly took private lessons in Barcelona and collaborated with the influential musicologist Felipe Pedrell. Towards the end of his life, Granados’ opera Goyescas took him to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where he baffled the audience by declaring that they ‘knew nothing of real Spanish music’. Although the opera was not a great success, President Wilson invited Granados to the White House, causing the composer to miss his return ship to Europe, which proved fatal. He took a later ship to England, and then boarded a ship for Dieppe, France, in Folkestone, which was hit by a torpedo. Granados was picked up by a life raft and rescued, but he jumped into the sea to help his wife and they both drowned.

Granados wrote about 140 works based on the European musical tradition, with occasional, but regular references to national and local musical elements. He composed mostly for piano, and later also wrote chamber and orchestral music and many vocal pieces. His most important vocal cycles are the ones presented this evening: Tonadillas and Amatorias.

He completed Twelve tonadillas in the old style in 1914, to verses by Fernando Periquet. In 1915, he published Canciones Amatorias, which included seven songs to verses by 16th and 17th century poets, about love, courtship, and relationships. He premiered them himself on the piano, with soprano Conxita Badia. The lyrics of Descúbrase el pensamiento – ‘Let the thought of my secret love be revealed’ – are attributed to the poet Comendador de Ávila, or, probably, the Portuguese António José de Ávila, and deal with hidden thoughts and feelings. The music follows the poem’s introspective and intimate character, and only at the end does the vocal part break away and allow thoughts to explode and develop into coloratura.

El majo olvidado translates as Forgotten majo, or young man: majo is a Spanish archetype, the figure of a spirited charmer, proud and special, and it can also mean ‘one’s beloved’. The singer addresses him, the man who once swept everyone off their feet with his charm, and today he is forgotten. In this expressive song, dedicated to the baritone Emilio da Gogorza, the musical development is gradual. In La maja dolorosa 1 (The Sorrowful Maja), a young woman, maja, addresses ‘cruel death’ that took her beloved: ‘my spirit is dissolved in tears (…) because it is death to live this way’. The vocal part of this lamentation alternates between expressive big leaps and chromatic creeping. Gracia mía, My graceful, composed to a text by an unknown author, brings a livelier rhythm and a more fluid and developed vocal part. In the original, the piano ‘imitated’ the guitar, and now the song will be performed by a guitar trio.

Pianist, composer, teacher, mother of eight children, wife of a respected (and demanding?) composer, and supporter of his work, Clara Schumann (b. Wieck, Leipzig, 1819 – Frankfurt, 1896) seems to have lived several lives in one. As a child, she toured as an accomplished pianist. She was taught piano by her father, who also taught Robert Schumann, whom she married in 1840 despite her father’s opposition. Clara Schumann’s music was long overshadowed by her husband’s canonical works and intense family life, as well as speculation about her relationship with Brahms, but today it is performed more frequently. She wrote mostly for the piano, where she was able to demonstrate her deep knowledge of the instrument, but she also wrote songs, chamber music, choral works, and a piano concerto. Romance, Op. 11, No. 1, was written in 1839 as a part of a set of three romances – shorter, Romantic character pieces. She wrote three-part expressive pieces in the period of transition to what is now considered her more mature creative phase.

Clara’s husband Robert Schumann (Zwickau, 1810 – Endenich, 1856) reportedly abandoned his law studies after hearing Paganini play in Frankfurt in 1830, when he decided he wanted to become a piano virtuoso. He was prevented from doing so by a hand injury, perhaps caused by a device he had invented to train his fingers, or by medical treatment. As a composer, he often devoted himself to one genre for long periods: in his early years to piano works, then exclusively to solo songs, then symphonic music, and finally chamber music. His pieces are often characterized by ‘gentle restlessness’ created by combining lyrical themes with dense contrapuntal work. He also founded an important journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. The later years of his life were marked by long periods without composing due to frequent depressions.

Schumann wrote Kinderszenen, Scenes from Childhood, in 1839. He initially composed thirty and then selected thirteen short lyrical pieces corresponding to the Romantic image of childhood, marked by nostalgia and an effort to portray innocence and playfulness. Schumann emphasized that they are ‘more about a man’s recollections of childhood than about pieces for children’. The Scenes are dedicated to Clara Schumann, who often performed them and suggested the current title instead of the original, Easy Pieces. In her letters, she described them as some of Schumann’s most tender and intimate pieces.

Croatian composer, pianist and writer Dubravko Detoni (Križevci, 1937) is the author of over 180 completed opuses of orchestral, chamber, solo, vocal and electronic music, numerous multimedia projects and experiments, thirteen books of poetry, prose, essays, journals and travel books, radio and television programmes, numerous concert and album reviews and a longtime associate of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival (from 2000 to 2010). He has received around forty national and international music awards and recognitions for his exceptionally extensive and successful work (Vladimir Nazor Award, Josip Štolcer Slavenski Award, six Porin Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, Zvono Lotršćak Award, Matica hrvatska and JRT Awards, Grand Prix at the 6th Paris Youth Biennale, Premio Italia, UNESCO Award, Bedřich Smetana Award, etc.). His works have been performed on all continents, at major international festivals, published in Croatia and abroad and include around 70 record releases. He equally uses elements of classical and electronic music, often combining them in his efforts to enrich his sound and expand expressive possibilities.

Nine Scenes from Danijel’s Dream (1986) is one of Detoni’s most performed works (against rather stiff competition), inspired by his son’s dreams when he was three years old. The piece is part of the repertoire of many pianists, and it was arranged for a guitar trio, a group of keyboard instruments and a symphony orchestra. The author wrote:

‘Each movement forms a closed lyrical or dramatic unit that is in contrast with the previous section: a balloon flight, a joyfully weightless entry into sleep, a depiction of an unusual antediluvian animal, a waltz of glass objects that clash with an entity that frantically shatters everything around it, the first experience of love expressed in the erotically charged tonal image of a collective tango-habanera or milonga, a evenly swaying barcarolle with an exciting experience of a sea storm, a march of trees and grass interrupted by a trio of sleepy wooden soldiers, a minuet of white chess queens, a song by a group of completely identical books, lost in the dark, dressed in pilgrim robes, and a final, stormy and dangerous war toccata filled with powerful explosions and the wild clang of furious weapons. The epilogue of the composition is a blurred memory of the previous waltz, in which the dream with all its scenes gradually fades and finally disperses.’ (Dubravko Detoni)

Joaquín Turina Pérez (Seville, 1882 – Madrid, 1949) studied music in Seville and Madrid, then in Paris, at the Schola Cantorum. He was a friend of Manuel de Falla, and their older colleague Isaac Albéniz encouraged them to use Spanish tradition in composing. Joaquín Turina wrote numerous works for piano and for voice, chamber pieces and two operas. He was also a music critic, conductor and educator. In addition, he was one of the first composers from whom the legendary guitarist Andrés Segovia commissioned new works for the guitar. He dedicated many of his works to his native Seville, pieces for orchestra, Sinfonía sevillana, for voice and orchestra, Canto a Sevilla, or piano miniatures, Rincones sevillanos.

Poem in the form of songs, Op. 19, was published in Madrid in 1923, as well as Three Arias, Op. 26. He wrote the Poem earlier, in 1917 and 1918, to texts by Ramón de Campoamor, who combined realism and Romantic symbolism. He composed the contrasting songs under the influence of French and Andalusian music: They are mostly in three parts, and he used melismas/exclamations from flamenco music, quejío. Turina added an instrumental introduction, Dedicatoria, to the four songs.

In the Spanish original, it is not clear whether a woman or a man is speaking, but with tonight’s performance and in accordance with the theme of this year’s Festival, we experience the lyrics from a female perspective. The melancholic and semi-recitative song Nunca olvida (Never Forget) sings of forgiveness before leaving this world: our heroine will forgive those she hated, but not the one she loved. In the restless and coloratura-filled Cantares (Songs) she sings ‘I feel closer to you the more I run from you’; in Los dos miedos, with a romantic accompaniment enriched with ornaments, there are two fears from the title: the first is ‘I am afraid of you’, and the second is ‘I am afraid without you’. The aforementioned Mad for Love, Las locas por amor, is a humorous, lively and rapturous climax of the cycle.

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