Slovenian Youth Orchestra with Film Music

The Slovenian Youth Orchestra performed in the sold-out Križanke Summer Theatre at the 72nd Ljubljana Festival. The orchestra was founded and is artistically led by conductor Živa Ploj Peršuh. Her organisational and networking skills and her personal magnetism towards young musicians from all over Slovenia of quite different ages as well as musical and concert experience, which is of course visible on stage and audible in the auditorium; guaranteed that the concert will be supported by the Ljubljana Festival and included in the annual festival programme.

Young musicians are supported by all festivals, regardless of their individual fate. They usually support students in their senior year at the academies or already graduated. Someone's decision at the age of 13 is probably not the same as going to high school and graduating from there and the academy, because even graduates often do not find a job and do not know where to go.

Music education and work in this orchestra, however, must be based on professionalism, as if everyone is going to be a professional musician for life. It needs animation, encouragement, role models, joy, but also a simple love of classical music.

At Monday's concert dedicated to Frank Zappa, we saw his saying written out: ‘Music is the only religion that brings good things.’ And these depend on one's outlook on life as well as on one's artistic outlook. If young musicians are given strong role models and examples, the way forward will be much easier.

The annual concert and the full audience was a nice encouragement. We heard a very varied programme at the concert.

American composer, pianist and conductor Scott Bradley (1891-1977) is best known for his music for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) cartoons, most notably Tom and Jerry the Cat and the Mouse (Hanna-Barbera 1940-1958). He was an academically trained composer and pianist who, after MGM set up a cartoon studio in 1937, continued to work for the company until its closure in 1957. By the end of the 1940s, his style had become original and complex, using the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg and influenced by Bartók, Stravinsky and Hindemith. (From Metka Sulič's programme).

We immediately listened to the technically demanding composition as an illustration of all the mainly movement changes of the well-known characters from the aforementioned cartoon, which are embellished or defined by specific mini-stories, scenes, lightning accelerations, retreats, restraints, reflections, figuring out the best situation... The cat and the mouse are unpredictable in their relationship, and so is the music. Peter Tovornik is listed in the programme as the arranger.

The Nutcracker is a fairy-tale ballet written and orchestrated by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). One of the most popular ballets of all time, it is usually performed at Christmas and New Year. The Waltz of the Flowers, is from the second act and concludes the Divertimento,which is a kind of exotic walk around the world and through different cultures. It is a favourite of the film industry and has been the basis for several films. (From the programme).

He will hardly agree that it is a film score, so a more pleasant image would be the selection of familiar scenes that make a more complete musical impression.

Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) won first prize for his veristic one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana (Peasant Honour). This passionate tragedy of headless love, deceit and revenge is set in a Sicilian village at Easter. The pastoral scenes give the opera a special charm. The heart-rending Intermezzo is the opera's most famous passage and occurs during the final scenes of The Godfather film trilogy, when the beloved daughter of a notorious Mafioso is accidentally killed in a crossfire on the steps of a theatre. (From the programme).

Intermezzo is also not film music, but Cavalleria rusticana is used as opera in much of the third part of The Godfather, as it takes place in an opera house, where we hear a soloist and a chorus performing on stage with certain symbolic meanings, from Christ to blasphemy.

I would have expected a greater depth of experience in the performance, but on the other hand it is more difficult for young people to feel the essentially psychoanalytic function of the music and its foreshadowing of the tragic end of a character, as in the opera, whereas in the film it is a fatal shooting of a young woman, a daughter.

Everybody likes to do Intermezzo, but very few do it in a profound, tragic way. It depends on the conductor.

Lauri Porra (1977) wrote Entropia in 2015. The composer premiered it with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra at the opening of the 150th anniversary season of Jean Sibelius. The almost 28-minute concerto for electric bass and orchestra consists of four movements. It combines styles from rock and jazz to classical, electronic and film music. He fuses the sound of the electric guitar with that of the orchestra; he complements the sound spectrum of the rock instrument with that of the orchestra, merging them into one in a balanced way. (From the programme).

The inclusion of this Finnish composer should enliven a concert evening when a well-known or less well-known guest is scheduled. The question here is whether this music is close to the young musicians' hearts, and whether they quickly grasp and accept it, as it requires a broader study, in which the composer and soloist may indeed participate, but the whole did not seem to be a necessary condition of the concert; I would rather have thought that this point was oversized, especially since this is not film music and it deviated entirely from the programme concept of the concert. I don't know what was behind it.

Jani Golob (1948), Slovenian composer, arranger, violinist and pedagogue, is the author of many chamber and orchestral works as well as music for film, various advertisements, television commercials, etc. He studied violin and composition at the Academy of Music in Ljubljana. His oeuvre is on the borderline between serious, party and jazz music. Among his best-known film scores are two unforgettable youth films, both set in the summer, the amorous Poletje v školjki (A Summer in a Sea Shell) (1985) and the adventurous Čisto pravi gusar (The Real Pirate) (1987).(From the programme).

Jani Golob is expressive enough, likable in his own way, but in Poletju v školjki the vocal is necessary or indispensable, otherwise the performance remains a torso. It would not have hurt, or would have been better and more authentic, if a few young singers of the age of the film's heroes had taken to the stage. In the opening track Pustite nam ta svet (Leave Us This World), the chorus. However, copyright (and how to deal with it) is sometimes an issue in the selection of film music, because otherwise there would be enough composers to choose from.

The most famous work by the American composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) is the musical West Side Story.The concept follows the plot of Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. Bernstein sets the story in New York among gangs (immigrants and whites), full of passion, jealousy and revenge. Mambo is a dance passage, fast, energetic, in which the protagonists dance to show what they can do. It is inspired by Cuban rhythms. The musical was made into a film in 1961, which won ten Oscars (from the programme).

Mambo is a test of the ability to make virtuosic music together, which must be based on perfection in every sense, which was not so much the case, for example, when we heard Mambo performed by the Sinfonica Alicante, or when we watched the performance of the Youth Orchestra of Simón Bolívar - Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar de Venezuela, under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel. It will be a long way to get there. Here I missed a clearer line-up of the 106-member orchestra on stage. More verticality and transparency of the winds; we saw only 9 flutes, horns, clarinets, saxophones, bassoons, oboes not at all. It was better with trumpets and trombones, the tuba was too much on the side. The spectator has the right to see all the musicians.

The Italian composer Nino Rota (1911-1979) wrote a lot of music for the film. He worked with Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli and Francis Ford Coppola. The latter's score for The Godfather (Part I in 1972, Part II in 1974), a trilogy about the Corleone family, a powerful mafia clan in the USA, is considered one of the most important in the film industry, and his music is an integral part of this success. Rota's music subtly captures the essence of the themes, characters and emotions, creating a distinctively Italian atmosphere embedded in American mafia milieus. The main theme of The Godfather - Waltz is a mysterious, somewhat sinister melody, the second most famous being the Love Theme,(From the programme).

More beautiful is the Love Theme,because in The Godfather, despite the mafia themes, love is expressed in many stories and, of course, fates, most preferred or most often in the most tragic way, through death. With many deaths. Here the orchestra was receptive and adopted the expressive melody as its own. Well, this was the second time the music from The Godfather was performed. The music was arranged by Marjan Peternel.

Montevideo, Taste of a Dream! is a 2010 film inspired by the real events leading up to the Yugoslav football team's participation in the first World Cup in Montevideo (Uruguay) in July 1930. Dragan Bjelogrlić directed this witty but also moving sports film. The music was provided by Magnifico, Robert Pešut. Pukni zoro is a slow, nostalgic song. An accomplished music maker, originally mixing influences from all ethnic and cultural winds, he also wrote this song as if it were original folk music with roots somewhere in the heart of the former commonwealth. (From the programme).

Magnifico is essentially a Balkan musician, in mentality and personality, in feeling, melody, rhythm, and in general a musical knowledge that is more instinctive than studious. But you know how it is with schools. We have 5.000 PhDs in Slovenia, but if you took a poll on the street, I don't know how many people would remember. Magnifico has successfully integrated itself into our space. Unfortunately, he did not come to the concert so that the young people could see him. The music was arranged by Matija Krečič.

Marjan Kozina (1907-1966) was one of the first Slovenian composers to write film music. In 1948, he composed the music for the first Slovenian post-war film Na svoje zemlji (On His Own Land).In 1951, he composed the music for the first Slovenian youth film, Kekec, directed by Jože Gale, based on a short story by Josip Vandot. Kekec's and the package Mojca's songs were adopted by Slovenian children as their own. Kozina showed a great sense of the children's world in this music. (From the programme).

The inclusion of Kekec's and Mojca's songs also created a nostalgia for the old days, like all film programmes or music from films that the younger generations are watching anew, while we older ones remember what it was like back in the days of black and white film. I would, of course, have put both Kekec and Mojca of their film age on stage singing. Kozina's music was first arranged by Marjan Vodopivec and for this concert by Nejc Bečan.

Marcel Štefančič Jr. moderated the concert with his comments and explanations of the films in terms of the starring role, history, making, specific content, context of the collaboration, and last but not least, effectiveness. Some of the comparisons were slightly or even rather metaphorical, self-mocking and of course provocative, which means that you don't necessarily have to believe them, following the famous Italian saying, "se non è vero, è ben trovato" "or "even if it's not true, it sounds good".

After a long and enthusiastic applause, there were two more additions, a reprise of Bernstein and Kozina.

The concert was very well received and successful, but in the future, it will be necessary to tighten up the criteria of the performance itself in the Slovenian Youth Orchestra; by rigorously demanding the knowledge and ability to make music together. However, there will be 20 fewer musicians on stage. Perfection, unfortunately, does not improve over the years.