Stjepan Šulek: Moje djetinstvo / My childhood

Martin Draušnik and Alina Gubaidullina – violins
Aleksandar Jakopanec – viola
Zita Varga – cello
Nikša Bobetko – double bass
Filip Fak – piano

Stjepan Šulek (1914–1986) achieved his status as an unquestioned authority in Croatian music of the second half of the twentieth century primarily as a composer, through an uncompromising struggle — in word and deed — for the right to “freedom of spirit and thought,” for individuality and artistic self-determination in the face of pressures from the national, revolutionary, and avant-garde musical environment of his time, a struggle he further sustained through his work as a performer and pedagogue. At times, this struggle assumed dramatic proportions, leaving its mark on his work. In the end, even those who criticized him for elitism, a lack of national orientation, academicism, or eclecticism—as well as those whom he himself accused of dilettantism—came to acknowledge his outstanding professionalism and his selfless dedication to sharing knowledge.

His oeuvre resists attempts at periodization (except perhaps with regard to his early and late works) and challenges notions of linear artistic development, which, as Eva Sedak (1994) observed, “reveals certain developmental cycles.” Nevertheless, it never departs from the defining characteristics that permeate his entire output: Baroque polyphony, Classical formal clarity, and Romantic expressiveness. At different moments, one or another of these elements comes to the fore, yet all remain integral to his musical language.

As Eva Sedak notes, the string quartet cycle My Childhood is neither Šulek’s “children’s corner” nor a “nursery,” nor does it consist of “childhood scenes” of the kind composed by Debussy, Mussorgsky, or Schumann. Nor are the quartets simply portraits of the close family members to whom they are dedicated: the First Quartet to “My late Mother and Father,” the Second to “My late Sister Koka,” the Third to “My Sister Mica,” the Fourth to “My Sister Vera,” and the Fifth to “My Sister Ela.”

(Tatjana Čunko)

98898497462
Zagreb, 2018.