The thirst for diversity and repertoire renewal earned us this unexpected CD allowing us to discover Countess Mária Theodora Paulina Pejačević, born in September 1885 in Budapest, who sadly died 38 years later following childbirth. His father, civil governor of Croatia, was able to provide him with the best education and then send him to Germany. These two scores are his first orchestral compositions. The 1913 concerto is considered, Chandos tells us, as “the first piano concerto by a Croatian composer” and the symphony (in F sharp minor, dark tone) dates from the Great War, when Dora worked as a volunteer nurse. Both scores are of an assumed post-romanticism. The concerto evolves somewhere between those, a little verbose, of the virtuoso pianists of the second half of the XIXe century and Sergei Bortkiewicz. The dark symphony is unequaled in its genre, apart from an impeccable scherzo, the 2e of Scriabin or the 2e by Franz Schmidt. But this music deserved to be heard and also well defended.
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