Parać, Frano: Symphony

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SYMPHONY in four traditional movements (1992/1993), as well as SARABANDE composed exactly ten years prior, allows us to recognise the key characteristics of his composing style and experience it in the full plasticity of the polychromic instrumental attire. The motif nuclei, which through repetition take up the role of melodic backbones, are also here, nevertheless pertaining primarily to the string layer of the orchestra, but also enriched by winds in their signal interventions, so that in the cumulative points of the musical development they would contribute vastly to the force and range of the strictly controlled gradations. This procedure is most prominent in the vehement first movement and in to it reflectively opposed last movement. Both in the Moderato tempo, they spring from the fourtone motif formula, downward in the former and upward in the latter, upon which rests the rise in pronounced tension (first gradual, then more sudden), and its subsequent appeasement, only to echo in the end, followed by the sounds of bells and timpani, in the increased note values. The lighter atmosphere at the beginning of the second movement, Andante amoroso, introduced by the modest diatonic melody of the woodwinds, is interrupted in its middle part by the rhythmically upset ostinatos of the strings and chromatically shaped original melody, which only in the solo bassoon performance returns to its original innocence. It is only in the third movement of the symphony of the vertiginous Alla danza – Allegro energico, that the orchestral tutti assumes the function throughout the movement of the obsessive dancing chant and maximal dynamics, drowning the somewhat threatening chromatic shrieks in the brass winds and horns.

Cantus d.o.o., 2014.

Edition No: Can. 110-3544

ISMN 979-0-801333-54-4