Triple Concerto for Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon and String Orchestra

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 Triple concerto for oboe, clarinet, bassoon and strings of 1986 is one of the last of the master’s concerti. The first movement, with its pure, neo-Classicist melodic lines only rarely has reminiscences of folk music, and when it does, they are of traditional Istrian music. The second movement is a kind of meditation that gives broad-breathed and highly pregnant melodies that are intertwined into the masterfully woven musical structure. In the third movement the concertante character of the composition comes to the fore, the instruments competing in the real sense of the word with the orchestra: Papandopulo often contrasts and alternates the formal blocks of the solo instruments with orchestral excerpts and the form of the movement is determined by blocks of virtuoso solo – tutti in competition, in which, to the satisfaction of the listener, all shine but none of them is in the end victorious.