Song Book for Three Guitars

Composer, pianist, conductor and music educator Željko Brkanović (Zagreb, 1937 – Crikvenica, 2018), one of the most eminent Croatian musicians of the 20th century, graduated in piano at the Music Academy in Zagreb, class of Svetislav Stančić (1962) and in composition at the Faculty of Music Art in Skopje, class of Tomo Prošev (1980). Later he did further studies in composition in Stuttgart working with the composer Ehrhard Karkoschka. Another of his teachers was his own father, composer Ivan Brkanović. Željko Brkanović also studied conducting at the Chigiana Academy in Siena (1965). He created a musical oeuvre characterised by a distinctive and original musical idiom consisting of some seventy solo, organ, chamber, concertante, orchestral and stage works, choral compositions and lieder. The Songbook for Three Guitars was completed on May 30, 1993, and is the composer’s own arrangement of the slightly older version of the composition, Songbook for Four Guitars, completed on May 12, 1993. The first performance of the work was put on by the Dubrovnik Guitar Trio on August 10, 1994, at the Osor Musical Evenings. In 1996 the same ensemble recorded the work for the Croatia Records label (CD DK 5078852). As the very title of the composition conveys, the Songbook weaves its extremely fine musical fabric from extremely melodious motific units that are passed from one instrument to another, every part getting its own separate, rounded and highly profiled physiognomy. Each of the three separate parts of the composition (Andantino cantabile, Larghetto con espressione and Allegro) features a particular atmosphere of its own: in the first two movements, melancholy and longing on the verge almost of sorrow in the third lively motion and the persistence of short motoric motifs that like the variegated glass chips in a kaleidoscope are always being rearranged, capturing the attention with the beauty and imagination of the new combinations. Because of the persistent motion, this movement seems to have its origins in some archetypal motion of some imaginary folk dance or round dance song and constitutes a very successful culmination for this uncommon and extremely original musical work.