Concerto for Horn and Orchestra

Krešimir Baranović (1894 – 1975) was a Croatian composer and conductor. He was director and conductor of the Zagreb Opera, Belgrade Opera and professor at the Belgrade Music Academy. In the spirit of a kind of Slavic expressionism, also seen in the works of Janáček and some of the 19th century Russian masters, Baranović was better than any other Croatian composer of his time in overcoming the discrepancy between the national and the universal to be seen in Croatian interwar music. Baranović’s Concerto for Horn and Orchestra, first performed on April 25, 1973, has an uncommon forerunner, the Elegy for Horn and Piano of 1950, a very popular Baranović’s composition that the composer simply orchestrated and inserted as its second movement into this Concerto (Elegy – Andante sostenuto). It might be said, then, that the Elegy is the nucleus of the Concerto, and that the first and third movements (the latter of which follows on from the Elegy attacca) “comment” on this central movement.