NA GLADINI SPOMINA

Classical and Modern Music

Format: Digitalno + CD

Code: 118210

EAN: 3838898118210

In cooperation with Radio Slovenia – ARS Programme ZKP RTV Slovenia is releasing the album entitled Na gladini spomina (On the Surface of Memory) by Josipina Turnograjska and Miroslav Vilhar, who enriched the lives of Slovenians, especially the Slovenian middle class, with their works in the middle of the 19th century. They are performed by soprano Nina Kompare Volasko and pianist Klemen Golner.

In the Austrian lands, the March Revolution of 1848 ended without significant political changes. It did, however, leave an indelible mark on the many bourgeois intellectuals who experienced it as high school pupils or university students. In them, the revolution cast doubt on the self-evident nature of the established, multicultural world of the Habsburg Monarchy. Faced with a wave of German nationalism, which reached even the urban centres of Austria, they began to question their sense of national belonging. Many of them were surprised to discover that they belonged to a different, previously unnoticed national community, which they named Slovenia. Among them were two amateur artists who, with their poetic and compositional works, began the search for a distinctive literary and musical voice of the new national community. Their activities had different motivations, and the reception of their works was conditioned by the role they played in nineteenth-century society. Miroslav Vilhar (1818–1871) appeared in public with his compositions. He began his life as Friedrich Wilcher, the son of a landowner and merchant from Inner Carniola. As a “der schöne Fritz”, he spent most of his youth and his unsuccessful student years attending bourgeois parties and indulging in scandalous adventures in German Graz. After the revolution, however, he established contact with his homeland and, partly under the influence of Fran Levstik, devoted himself to propagating Slovenian national consciousness. He worked as a poet, a politician and a publisher of the newspaper Naprej (Forward), staking his name, his property and – for defying censorship – even his freedom for the good of the nation. Vilhar’s vocal compositions, in which, almost without exception, he contributed both the text and the music, are an expression of his political activity and his distinctly pan-Slavic orientation. In terms of content, many of them are close to folk songs, in which Vilhar saw the purest expression of the national emotion (e.g., Ljubemu). In others, we cannot overlook a national-awakening zeal and an idealised bourgeois glorification of the domestic world (Planinarica, Slovenka). With regard to the music, Vilhar’s solo songs are the work of an intuitively creative amateur with an exceptionally broad musical horizon. In his musical expression, he combined very diverse musical impressions, and his enthusiasm for Italian and German opera of the first half of the nineteenth century is particularly evident. The same could be said for his piano compositions, which are also intended for the Slovenian bourgeois amateur musician. Although Vilhar relied heavily on well-known models from Austrian dance music, he tried to localise the works with programmatic titles or the use of wellknown, supposedly folk tunes. The fate of the work of Josipina Urbančič, married name Toman (1833–1854), who also published under the pseudonym Turnograjska, was completely different. She was born into a wealthy landowning family and made better use of her opportunities to obtain a comprehensive education. Under the influence of her teacher Lovro Pintar, she became enthusiastic about the Slovenian nation and had a strong attachment to Illyrianism, which was still alive at the time. In the extremely short time allotted to her, her literary creations found their way to readers and enjoyed a favourable public response. However, her songs, with rare exceptions, remained known only to a small circle of relatives and friends. Almost all of them seem to have been created as a gift to her beloved husband, Lovro Toman, so they are more the work of an exemplary nineteenth-century wife than the creations of an emancipated artist. Her solo songs, mostly based on her husband’s poetry, are short, charming occasional compositions that belong to the world of amateur salon music of the nineteenth century, both in terms of composition and performance demands. Their greatest value is in the use of Slovenian texts, which successfully drove lavish foreign music production from the most intimate family celebrations of the Slovenian bourgeois Toman family. Turnograjska’s tiny piano compositions, like those of Vilhar, are closely modelled on the salon dance music of the Central European lands. They are written skilfully, with a great deal of fresh melodic invention, and still impress today with their almost Biedermeier simplicity. The musical works of Miroslav Vilhar and Josipina Turnograjska are a valuable document of the music that gave sound to the everyday life of the Slovenian bourgeoisie in the middle of the nineteenth century. They are an expression of Slovenian-speaking Austrians who wanted to use their Slavic language freely, but whose musical heart was still moved mainly by music that did not differ significantly from that of other lands of the then Austria.

- Aleš Nagode

Nina Kompare Volasko

After graduating from the Ljubljana Music High School, soprano Nina Kompare Volasko studied solo singing at the Birmingham Conservatory of Music in Great Britain, where she graduated with honours in 2002. Two years later, she completed her postgraduate studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels. During this period, she also completed her studies in English and Latin language and literature at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. While studying, she performed various opera roles. As a concert singer and interpreter of lieder, she has often appeared on stages in Slovenia, various European countries, Canada and the United States, performing a wide repertoire of works from early Baroque to contemporary vocal compositions. Nina Kompare Volasko has collaborated with various vocal-instrumental ensembles and orchestras, including the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra and Big Band, the Birmingham City Symphony Orchestra and the Cantabile Symphony Orchestra, as well as various chamber ensembles. She has performed at a range of festivals for chamber music and early music, both in Slovenia and abroad. In 2006, she recorded the song cycle Quand la lune danse for a CD of contemporary chamber music by the Belgian composer Jan Van Landeghem, and in 2008 her own CD of Slovenian folk songs entitled Sijaj mi, sončece was released by the label ZKP RTV Slovenia. Nina Kompare Volasko has been a successful teacher of solo singing for many years. She taught and led the Singing School of the Ljubljana Music Society for fifteen years, as well as teaching solo singing at the Koper Arts Grammar School for five years and vocal technique at the Ljubljana Academy of Music for three years. She currently serves as a singing teacher at the Logatec Music School.

Klemen Golner

Pianist Klemen Golner, a native of Celje, studied the piano with Prof. Majda Martinc and Prof. Janez Lovše at the Ljubljana Music and Ballet High School. He then studied the piano at the Ljubljana Academy of Music with Prof. Aci Bertoncelj, graduating in 1997. In 1995, during his studies, he received the Student Prešeren Prize of the Academy of Music for his performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466. He also attended the international piano courses of Arbo Valdma and Leonid Brumberg. After graduating, he completed a year of specialisation at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest with Prof. Balázs Kecskés. In 1995, while still studying in Ljubljana, Klemen Golner began collaborating with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra. Since the 2012/2013 season, he has been a regular member of the orchestra and has appeared with it many times as a soloist. In January 2013, within the cycle Mozartine, he performed Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, No. 23, K. 488 with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, and in October 2017 he played the concert composition Prvi polet by Blaž Arnič at a concert marking the 90th anniversary of Radio Slovenia in the Marjan Kozina Hall of the Slovenian Philharmonic. As a soloist, he has performed piano concertos by Dittersdorf, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, Emil Adamič’s Ljubljana Concerto and Adinssell’s Warsaw Concerto, as well as giving the premiere performances of Marko Muni Mihevc’s Romantic Concertino and Peter Kopač’s Piano Concerto. Klemen Golner has given many solo recitals in Slovenia and other Central European countries, and he regularly plays in the contemporary music ensemble Neofonía as well as in other chamber ensembles. He has recorded numerous music albums.