Feelings of my heart

The pre-concert talk will take place at 7.00 pm.

The 39th Slovenian Music Days will end in the expected manner: with the music of superlative artists who belong at the very pinnacle of contemporary Slovene composition – under the baton of Steven Loy, a conductor renowned for his insightful interpretations of contemporary music, and performed by the Slovenian Philharmonic String Chamber Orchestra. The concluding concert will open with a work by the remarkable Nana Forte, a composer who is constructing, with passion and talent, a musical legacy that will inspire future generations. Her varied oeuvre, which has earned the plaudits of critics and audiences around the world, was enriched in 2020 by Last Dance – a composition that eschews trendy impulses. Another renowned name in contemporary Slovene music is that of Urška Pompe, a composer whose hallmarks are communicativeness and introspection and who speaks directly and sincerely, not least in …this little piece of blue sky…, a work that will be performed here for the first time in a newly revised, expanded form. Excellence is also reflected in the creativity of Tadeja Vulc, a composer who specialises in works for voice but who also seeks expressive freedom in instrumental music. A supremely skilled shaper of musical material, she once again demonstrates her characteristic inventiveness in Selva oscura (2024), a piece inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.

The heart of this evening, which bears the evocative title Feelings of My Heart, is a new work that significantly enriches the original Slovene repertoire for cello and orchestra: the 12 Months cycle created by four Slovene composers. This new work has been written for the virtuoso cellist Bernardo Brizani, whose extraordinary talent, apparent from an early age, has brought this remarkable performer of greater stylistic breadth to the status of soloist of international dimensions. The four seasons are dressed in contemporary musical garb by Leon Firšt, one of Slovenia’s most garlanded and most frequently performed young composers; Črt Sojar Voglar, an expressively original composer who always finds a path to the listener; Tilen Slakan, very popular among Slovene performers and distinguished by stylistic breadth, refinement and sensitivity; and Jani Golob, a composer of multiple styles and genres who has spent his entire creative life walking the fine line between classical music and jazz and pop styles.

This festival of music will end in great style with Mouvement concertants (1955), a powerful and serious work for string orchestra by Uroš Krek, whose compositional poetics are based on a blend of neoclassical objectivism and expressionist subjectivism in which an element of folk creativity is nevertheless always present.