Cantus Ensemble to present a concert titled COLLISIONS on February 13 at Lisinski
The third concert of the Cantus Ensemble cycle, also the first one this year, will take place on Monday, February 13, 2023 at 8:00 p.m., in the Small Hall of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. The COLLISIONS concert, led by Ivan Josip Skender, will showcase three works by notable contemporary composers who have already made their mark in 20th-century music history. These pieces demonstrate three distinct and complex approaches to contemporary sound. As the fourth piece, the ensemble looks to the future by premiering a new work by a prominent living Croatian woman composer.
György Ligeti referred to his four-movement Chamber Concerto as a "concert composition because all thirteen performers are virtuoso soloists and are equal." This is a piece for thirteen soloists whose "parts develop simultaneously, but at different speeds and in diverse rhythmic configurations." The work was composed by Ligeti between 1969 and 1970 for the Die Reihe ensemble.
Italian composer Luigi Nono wrote Incontri in 1955 in Venice, and it was premiered at the renowned International Summer Courses in Darmstadt. This musical piece is composed of 24 instruments and showcases serial music. Its title alludes to the convergence of different yet harmonious structures and the overlapping sound layers in constant "conflict."
The Partials by the French author Grisey is one of the essential works of spectralism from 1975. The piece is called Acoustic Spaces, the third composition in Gérard Grisey's cycle. He was a student of Messiaen and is credited with founding spectralism, an ongoing interest for many composers over the years. It's a composition for eighteen instruments. It is based on sound analysis and the use of the harmonic spectrum – the internal, detailed structure of sound – as the foundation for the harmonies performed by the ensemble. The beginning of this composition is particularly influential, in which each instrument in the ensemble plays one of the partial tones found in analyzing a single deep trombone tone, creating a new brilliant sonority.
Sanja Drakulić, a Croatian pianist and composer who received education in Zagreb and Moscow and currently teaches in Osijek, is working on a new composition for her birthday later this year. The piece is intended for the Cantus Ensemble. Ten years ago, celebrating her 50th birthday, musicologist Đurđa Otržan called her a "complete expressionist" and the "captain of a ship that constantly sails and sees, chooses, and awakens new landscapes."
Tickets for Cantus Ensemble concerts are available through the ulaznice.hr system, priced at 5 euros.