Distopija

Ligatura Series – HRT/HDS/Cantus
Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra
Aleksandar Marković, Pierre-André Valade, Pascal Rophé, and Pavle Zajcev, conductors

Since 2013, Croatian Radiotelevision has, through its composer-in-residence programme, encouraged the development of domestic music production and enriched the repertoire of Croatian classical music. The new release Distopija presents two women composers and two men composers who have so far held the roles of HRT composers-in-residence. HRT and HDS also launched the Ligatura series precisely so that valuable studio recordings of works commissioned and premiered within this programme could be presented to the public, mostly works by prominent HDS members, as is also the case on this album. Olja Jelaska, Mladen Tarbuk, Krešimir Seletković, and Mirela Ivičević form a quartet that, besides standing in gender balance, also generates four masterful authorial voices – mutually different, yet in certain ways complementary. All four works were premiered and subsequently recorded by the Croatian Radiotelevision Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductors Aleksandar Marković, Pierre-André Valade, Pascal Rophé, and Pavle Zajcev.

The title Distopija, borrowed from the title of Krešimir Seletković’s concerto for orchestra, creates a meaningful conceptual arc linking personal experience and collective reality in the works of all four composers. Olja Jelaska’s symphonic poem Modri val evokes the power of nature and the cycle of destruction and renewal, while Tarbuk’s Sinfonia questions humanity’s struggle between past and present. Seletković’s Dystopia reflects contemporary crises through fragmented musical forms, while Mirela Ivičević’s Black Moon Lilith, through a feminist and mythological approach, explores the conflict between the individual and society.

Artistic collaborations
In the Ligatura series, we collaborate with contemporary visual artists whose works on the covers immediately introduce us to the poetics of the musical works. For the design of the album Distopija, the visual concept was created by the established artist Zlatan Vehabović.

The album was released with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.