Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

Croatian composer and conductor of Czech origin Fran Lhotka (1883 – 1962) studied the horn and composition in Prague under Stecker, Klička and Dvořák. His teaching career began in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk) and in 1909 he joined the Zagreb Opera orchestra. From 1920 to 1961 he was a professor at the Zagreb Academy of Music. In his music Lhotka often used Croatian folk materials. He wrote in a late Romantic style, strong in contrasts and brilliant in instrumentation. A vivid rhythmic sense distinguished his work for the ballet, as well as a gift for the musical reflection of a wide range of emotions and dramatic effects. His most popular work, Đavo u selu (‘The Devil in the Village’, 1935), encompasses scenes of rowdy carousing and banal everyday life, hellish and grotesque moments and a wedding finale. Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D minor was written in Zagreb in 1913. It was first produced in Prague on January 18, 1914. The soloist was the Viennese violinist Otty Reiniger, with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vilém Zemánek. The work has three traditionally conceived movements, from sonata form, via a freely rhapsodically formed slow movement, to the final rondo. The composer built it using the recognisable elements of Slavic late Romanticism, drawing on the heritage of the melodies and instrumentation of Dvořák. In the technical demands made on the solo part, the harmonic diversity, the melodic and rhythmical elaboration and the folk music strains in the closing part, the work reaches the high aesthetic criteria of the same kind of works by great predecessors, such as Tchaikovsky and Dvořák. (Ana Vidić)