IVAN REPUŠIĆ, Conductor

ANNIKA SCHLICHT, Mezzo-soprano

 

Richard Wagner: Overture to the opera Lohengrin

Dora Pejačević: Songs for Voice and Orchestra

Richard Wagner: Overture to the opera Tannhäuser

Richard Strauss: A Hero’s Life, symphonic poem

 

Ivan Repušić, outstanding Croatian conductor of international renown, sees each appearance with distinguished foreign orchestras at Lisinski Hall as an opportunity to promote Croatian composers. This time he has chosen Songs for Voice and Orchestra by Dora Pejačević, one of the most talented composers from the turn of the 20th century, whose works the world has only recently begun to discover and admire. Dora Pejačević's orchestral songs are typical examples of this form of European music from the end of the century, fin de siècle. Although composed in 1915 and 1920, they reflect the spirit of romantic motifs from previous periods, such as the atmospheres of death, farewell, night, or refined images of nature. Dora Pejačević's orchestral songs are important contributions to the European history of this form, created while it was still contemporary.

 

Some believe that the term prelude is better suited to the overture to the opera Lohengrin by the great opera reformer Richard Wagner. It depicts a vision of the Grail, the sacred vessel containing Christ’s blood, which descends from the heights and then disappears again into the heavens. The famous overture to the opera Tannhäuser is a popular item on concert programmes. It is built from two contrasting motifs that ultimately unite: the dissonant, sensual motif of sensuous pleasures from the Venusberg and the calm, majestic motif of the pilgrims’ chorus. The operatic giant used this duality to express his own internal division between worldly intoxication on the one hand, and contrition and deep ideals on the other, which transitions into Christian mysticism in his last opera, Parsifal.

 

The symphonic poem A Hero’s Life is an autobiographical work by Richard Strauss, the great German composer who stepped directly from 19th-century Romanticism into the 20th century. Remarkably well-educated in music, philosophy and literature, Strauss produced powerful works of great thought in his long and fruitful life.

 

Maestro Ivan Repušić (born in 1978) is the chief conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Staatskapelle Weimar and the first permanent guest conductor of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He often and gladly returns to Lisinski Hall, and this time he is bringing the Staatskapelle Weimar, one of the oldest and most traditional orchestras in the world, whose roots go back to 1491! They will be joined by the distinguished German mezzo-soprano Annika Schlicht, a member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Wagner's works occupy a special place in her rich repertoire. She often collaborates with Maestro Repušić, with whom she also performed at Lisinski Hall in February 2020, just before the pandemic. Alongside the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Choir, she was among the soloists in Igor Kuljerić’s Croatian Glagolitic Requiem.