Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, No. 2

Boris Papandopulo (1906 – 1991) is one of the most distinctive Croatian musicians of the 20th century. Papandopulo also worked as music writer, journalist, reviewer, pianist and piano accompanist; however, he achieved the peaks of his career in music as a composer. His composing oeuvre is imposing – Papandopulo composed almost 500 opuses: with great success he created instrumental (orchestral, concertante, chamber and solo), vocal and instrumental (for solo voice and choir), music-stage and film music. In all these kinds and genres he left a string of anthology-piece compositions of great artistic value. The Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra No 2 retains the classical three movements, but in respect of form and content, it is very specific in that it has certain characteristics of the divertimento (divertirsi, it. – to amuse). Like a number of other works by Papandopulo, the Second Concerto is marked by both material generated from folk music and by compositional technical procedures typical of the revivals of historical styles – neo-Baroque and neo-Classicism. In the first movement of the Concerto there are no traces of musical substance copied or derived from folk music, while in the other two the music of the people plays a very important role, which at first view gives the work, from the aspect of uniformity of styles, a certain incoherence. But in this resides a specific feature of Papandopulo’s work: he has managed here at a higher level to synthesise various idioms, which do not the while give the effect of being two heterogeneous, opposed tonal worlds, being instead, as in many other works of his, merged into a harmonious whole... (Davor Merkaš)