Carnival. Tone Portrait for Symphony Orchestra, Op. 2

The concert evening on February 5, 1916, in the Royal Croatian Land Theatre in Zagreb heralded as the “first symphonic concert of young Croatian composers” confused and divided the musical public in Zagreb with its musical contents. One reason, alongside the works of Krešimir Baranović, Božidar Širola, Franjo Dugan, Svetislav Stančić and Dora Pejačević, was the orchestral composition Carnival by Antun Dobronić (1878 – 1955). At that time Dobronić was already 38 years old, and yet musical Zagreb had hardly heard of him, and the first performance of Carnival was the most important appearance of his music on the domestic music scene. The reason for this was the complete untypicality of Dobronić’s life and his path as a professional in music. It led him, when he was already 32, to the study of music in the Prague Conservatory. He had already attended teachers’ school and had for ten years, while he was employed in schools in small towns and villages around Dalmatia, taught himself about the music he loved, with just occasional help from experts in the field. Finally, after two years of studying composition and conducting, he was at last a professional, conservatory-trained musician. When he came back, he started his professional career in music in 1912 in Split, and yet a few more years were to pass before his debut as a composer in the capital, at the concert mentioned above. Only when he moved to Zagreb in 1918 was he gradually incorporated into the mainstream of musical events in the country... (From the edition of Carnival, MIC 2015)