Springtime in Yugoslavia

Release Date: 8th Mar 2019
Catalogue No: ELQ4840200
Label: Eloquence
Length: 2 hours 18 minutes

Usually despatched in 3 - 4 working days

Lhotka: The Devil in the Village: Ballet Suite

Work length25:06

Orchestra Of The National Opera House, Zagreb
Fran Lhotka
Recorded: 1955-04
Recording Venue: National Theatre, Zagreb

1. The Devil Plots Against the Two Lovers, Mirko & Yela

Track length4:50

2. Dance

Track length3:01

3. In Hell

Track length1:33

4. Witches' Sabbath

Track length7:04

5. Witches' Orgy

Track length3:24

6. The Return Of Light

Track length1:33

7. Mirko's Escape From Hell, General Rejoicing

Track length3:41

Baranovic: The Gingerbread Heart: Ballet Suite

Work length20:51

Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra
Kreshimir Baranovich
Recorded: 1955-03
Recording Venue: National Theatre, Zagreb

1. At The Fair

Track length8:59

2. Boys & Girls Enter

Track length2:42

3. The Gingerbread Figures Come To Life

Track length1:25

4. Pas de Deux Of The Two Gingerbread Hearts

Track length4:12

5. Outside The Church

Track length1:51

6. Celebration

Track length1:42

Janáček: Lachian Dances

Work length22:30

London Philharmonic Orchestra
François Huybrechts
Recorded: 1970-10-22
Recording Venue: Kingsway Hall, London

1. Starodávny I

Track length6:35

2. Pozehnany

Track length2:27

3. Dymák

Track length2:15

4. Starodávny II

Track length5:55

5. Celadensky

Track length2:03

6. Pilky

Track length3:15

Štolcer-Slavensk: Simfonija Orijenta ‘Religiofonija’

Work length44:01

Melanie Bugarinovich (mezzo-soprano), Zharko Tzveych (bass), Dushan Tzveych (tenor), Dushan Popovich (baritone)
Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic Chorus
Zhika Zdravkovich

1. Pagans

Track length2:13

2. Hebrews

Track length7:22

3. Buddhists

Track length12:50

4. Christians

Track length4:26

5. Moslems

Track length6:53

6. Free thought

Track length5:40

7. Hymn of Toil

Track length4:37

Janáček: Taras Bulba

Work length26:19

London Philharmonic Orchestra
François Huybrechts
Recorded: 1970-10-22
Recording Venue: Kingsway Hall, London

1. The death of Andri

Track length10:24

2. The death of Ostap

Track length5:46

3. The prophecy and the death of Taras Bulba

Track length10:09

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About

Three Decca albums issued complete, including a first release on CD for the Simfonija Orijenta, a monument of Yugoslavian musical modernism, and François Huybrechts’s poetic Taras Bulba from his Janacek disc.

This release forms an important appendix to the Eloquence reissues of the seven Russian opera recordings made by Decca with the company of the Belgrade Opera in 1955. Two further orchestral albums were recorded at the time, featuring three of the most significant Yugoslav composers of the day. The first of them features brightly coloured, picture-postcard suites from two folk-inspired ballets, The Gingerbread Heart by Kresaimir Baranovic and The Devil in the Village by Fran Lhotka. They were conducted with idiomatic elan by Baranovic himself, who was then the chief conductor of the Zagreb Opera, and director of several of the Belgrade opera recordings (he also conducted The Gingerbread Heart at the 1951 Edinburgh Festival to great success).

Several vocal soloists from those recordings feature on the Simfonija Orijenta, an extraordinarily ambitious work that attempts a portrait history in music of the world’s great religions over the course of seven movements and 40 minutes, concluding with a grand Soviet ‘Hymn of Toil’. It was composed by Zagreb-born Josip Stolcer-Slavenski, the first Yugoslav modernist, who went further than either Lhotka or Baranovic in studying and then deploying folk idiom, to which he added avant-garde techniques that earnt his music a place at some of Europe’s premier new-music festivals in Donaueschingen, Paris and London.

Slavenski’s work has a thrilling angularity and unpredictability, as individual in its way as the language of Leo Janacek, whose Taras Bulba and Lachian Dances featured on the debut album for Decca by the Belgian-born conductor Francois Huybrechts. A rising maestro during the 1970s, he was a prizewinner of the 1968 Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music competition for Conductors and the 1970 Karajan International Conductors’ Competition.

‘Nowadays many people are suspicious of modern music that is attractive at a first hearing. If you have not reached that degree of sophistication you will enjoy this record.’ - Gramophone, July 1955 (Baranovic/Lhotka)

‘The recording is splendidly vivid, the orchestral playing assured and vivid, the soloists strong and secure, and the choral singing first-rate.’ - Gramophone, July 1955 (Stolcer-Slavenski)

‘We’ll be hearing again, and often, from so promising a youngster as Huybrechts - and meanwhile his Lachian Dances should not be missed.’ - High Fidelity, October 1972 (Janacek)

Springtime in Yugoslavia

2 CDs

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