Bruno Vlahek: CRO Suite, for alto saxophone and piano, Op. 49

CRO Suite for alto saxophone and piano, op. 49 was composed on commission and dedicated to the composer’s friend and colleague Tong Yang, a Chinese saxophonist and professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. This piece was created for the occasion of his performance at the 18th World Saxophone Congress in 2018 in Zagreb, where Yang premiered it with pianist Ivan Batoš.

According to the composer, the suite is conceived as a sequence of eight short movements which, like a kind of musical guide, evoke sounds, rhythms, colours, and memories from various regions of Croatia. An energetic dance-like beginning dominates the introductory Drmeš (“Shaking Dance”), followed by the dissonant Ganga (Dinaric singing) with the use of quarter tones; and then the Invocation, which explores various acoustic phenomena, with the intensive use of extended techniques. “In concept, the suite evokes something that might belong to an imagined ancient Slavic ritual of venerating the Earth, nature, or mythical spirits and beings – something that may still persist in our collective (sub)consciousness,” explains Bruno Vlahek. With the intention of creating a warm, rustic atmosphere of a characteristic Croatian home, he reshaped one of his favourite Christmas carols – U to vrijeme godišta (“In That Time of Year”) – in the Christmas Canon. Drawing inspiration from the Istrian folk instrument dvojnice (“double whistle”), Istriana introduces rapid virtuosic melismata and the interval of the second, creating an almost hypnotic, trance-like effect; intermittently interrupted by the distant echoes of motifs from Symphonic Dance by Jakov Gotovac. A kind of saxophone cadence follows in Invocation II, while the popular Zagorje song Lepe ti je Zagorje zelene (“Beautiful Are the Zagorje Hills”) serves as the theme of a joyful finale that enlivens the scene of a traditional country fair, with fun and celebration of the festivities.

(Bojana Plećaš-Kalebota, translated by Mia Pleša)

HDS, Cantus, 2026
Edition numbers: Can. ‭402-3756
ISMN 979-0-801363-75-6