Simfonijski orkestar HRT-a: 8 decades

An exceptionally important segment of the activity of the Symphony Orchestra of Croatian Radio Television is its unremitting concern for the Croatian music heritage and contemporary creative work, and these two CDs constitute a kind of cross–section of the development of Croatian music over about a century and a half, from the elegant Grande Polonaise of Vatroslav Lisinski, written in Prague in the tumultuous and revolutionary year of 1848, when the ferment of ideas and political concepts created national hopes among the Czechs and Croats, to the Sarabande of Frano Parać and Epicurus’ Garden of Ivo Josipović from the 1980s, which preceded the ultimate fruition of these hopes. The CDs contain some of the pivotal works of Croatian music: Sunny Fields by Blagoje Bersa and Symphonic Round Dance [Kolo] by Jakov Gotovac as well as several works in the oeuvres of other composers, Boris Papandopulo, Bruno Bjelinski, Stjepan Šulek and Natko Devčić that have, each in its own way, marked a particular moment of Croatian music or that are particularly associated with a given chief conductor. The selection of recordings is a cross section through the very work of the orchestra, from a studio recording of 1969 to the most recent live recording in a concert in the Master Cycle of CRT of October 28, 2010. The prime condition for a recording to be selected was that the works had to be conducted by one of the chief conductors of the Symphony Orchestra of the Croatian Radio Television, from Pavle Dešpalj to Nikša Bareza.