Boris Papandopulo Concertos pour piano et pour violon Triendl Zhu Matvejeff - CPO555100

Le Croate Boris Papandopulo a abordé tous les genres musicaux à travers un corpus de plus de 450 œuvres. Touche-à-tout, il a expérimenté à la fois la série, l'expressionnisme et le néo-classicisme. Composition de guerre, le Concerto pour violon (1943) est une fresque ambitieuse et lyrique qui emprunte le langage et la forme du grand concerto romantique : ponctué par l'écho insistant d'une marche militaire et résonnant d'accents dramatiques, mélancoliques et héroïques, le vaste premier mouvement est suivi d'un très bel Andante élégiaque et méditatif dans lequel le soliste déploie un chant désolé d'une poignante beauté, tandis que l'Allegro final, tonique et optimiste, puise son inspiration dans le folklore balkanique. Plus court et plus léger, le Troisième Concerto pour piano (1959) intègre des rythmes, des mélodies et une orchestration issues du jazz tardivement découvert dans une Yougoslavie qui tient tête à Staline et commence à s'ouvrir à la culture occidentale : c'est un joyeux mélange de styles hétéroclites, utilisant de faux thèmes populaires, parodiant des mélodies de danses hongroises, le tout animé par un piano virtuose swinguant des mambos et des foxtrots qu'un Gershwin ou un Bernstein n'auraient pas reniés. Parfaitement accompagnés par Ville Matvejeff, Dan Zhu et Oliver Triendl (qui nous a déjà révélé le Second Concerto pour piano - CPO777829) sont superlatifs. (Alexis Brodsky)

This month we are releasing a second CD with concertos by Boris Papandopulo, Croatia’s greatest twentieth-century composer. His Violin Concerto op. 125 experienced an unusual fate inasmuch as it was composed during one of the most fiercely fought battles and horrors of World War II – a fact reflected somewhat – but only somewhat – in this opulent work. Papandopulo followed precedents set by the great late-romantic violin concertos – as we see in his harmonic language, which he has subtly enriched with various elements from Croatian vocal music. The composer has a masterful command of the orchestra, which introduces all the important formal segments with little interludes and plays an outstanding role in the symphonic structure of the work. Papandopulo’s Piano Concerto No. 3 suffered the same fate as many other works by him: they cannot be located and are regarded as lost. Nobody knows what happened to the autographic score of the concerto. About ten years ago, however, the pianist Dalibor Cikojeviæ began developing an interest in this work and acquired the piano part from Stjepan Radiæ, the soloist at the concerto’s premiere, which along with the orchestral material made it possible to reconstruct the work. The concerto is a unique work inasmuch as in it the composer’s full powers of assimilation and his openness toward all the idioms that were modern during the time come to expression – even including lighter music and above all jazz, which academic circles in Zagreb, Croatia, and the whole of Yugoslavia continued to view as a trivial art form, suited at most to entertain the masses, when the concerto was composed (1959). This fact reveals to us something about Papandopulo’s courage and his resistance to academic conventions and worldviews. This CD is our first cooperative project with the Rijeka National Opera and its versatile Symphony Orchestra.