Overture for Large Orchestra in D Minor, Op. 49

Dora Pejačević (1885 – 1923) is one of the most talentet female composers at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. She studied at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb then briefly in Dresden with Sherwood and in Munich with Courvoisier. For the most part, however, she was self-taught and developed her musical talents through contact with other artists and intellectuals, such as Karl Kraus. Her ancestral home was at Našice (near Osijek), but she also travelled extensively to Budapest, Munich, Prague and Vienna. After 1921 she lived mainly in Munich. Her works were performed most frequently outside Croatia; part of her Symphony, for example, was first given in Vienna (25 January 1918) and the complete work was performed later in Dresden. Her late Romantic idiom, enriched with Impressionist harmonies and lush orchestral colours, evolved as she strove to break free from drawing-room mannerisms and conventions... The tendency towards integration of the thematic material is also visible in the Overture Op. 49 (1919), created in a freely conceived sonata form, which is expanded in the development by a new, third theme. The elements of two of the three main themes are brought together in the closing Coda. Only the first theme, marked by dramatic tension, undergoes multiple changes throughout the composition, and the entirety of the work is determined essentially by its features. The flow of the music is not interrupted by caesuras, and the form is moulded into an organic whole. (Koraljka Kos)