Invisible Threads

The Invisible Threads of the title of this organ recital evoke the complex yet frequently forgotten connections between Slovene organ music, the Viennese tradition and the early radio broadcasts that, in the 1930s, brought together the sacred and the profane. Before the Second World War Ljubljana’s cathedral and Franciscan church were the venues for radio broadcasts of the liturgy and solo organ concerts featuring the most prominent Slovene organists and composers of the time. Music preserved in manuscripts and the music that once travelled through microphone cables into listeners’ homes thus revives those ties that once invisibly connected places of worship, the radio studio and broader musical culture.

Such radio broadcasts brought to the air Stanko Premrl, Franc Kimovec and Matija Tomc – organists, composers and teachers who performed both Slovene works and the music of their contemporaries. All three were shaped by the Viennese school. Premrl, a successor of Anton Foerster, the centenary of whose death we will mark in 2026, studied composition with Robert Fuchs, where he also encountered the very different aesthetic principles of Arnold Schoenberg, the central figure of the “Second Viennese School”, whose only surviving and recently revised organ composition will also be performed at this recital, part of the Radio Ars organ series Visits of the Queen. Kimovec studied at the Church Music Department of the University of Vienna in Klosterneuburg and, after returning to Ljubljana, became the first conductor of the Radio Choir, founded in 1937. Tomc, for his part, studied in Vienna under the legendary Franz Schmidt.

These connections are also reflected in the programme of the organ concert, which blends Slovene and Austrian works and offers a glimpse into the stylistic diversity of 20^th-century organ music. The organist is Polona Gantar, a musician of remarkable breadth who trained at the Carinthian State Conservatorium in Klagenfurt and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where she completed her master’s degree under Peter Planyavsky before pursuing further studies with leading European organists. She performs as a soloist both at home and abroad and makes regular recordings for the archives and for RTV Slovenia’s record label ZKP. She is a music editor at Radio Ars and the organist of the Church of the Annunciation in Ljubljana (the Franciscan Church).