Concerto No. 2 per marimbafono e orchestra

Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic

General Info

Year: 1997
Duration: c. 26:00
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: MusicaEur
Cost: Score and Parts - $0.00   |   Score Only - $0.00

Instrumentation

Marimba

Orchestra

Program Notes

When one mentions a concert for a solo instrument and orchestra, one usually thinks of a three-movement form with two mutually opposed sound sources that become “reconciled” in the closing bars of the work. A solo cadenza is almost assumed. However, the Concerto No.2 for marimba and orchestra1 by Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic2 we refer to is, in many ways, an exception compared to standard compositions of this kind. First of all, the instrument counterposed to the orchestra is the marimba3, an old African percussive source of sound, hardly imaginable in the setting of a symphony ensemble. Another exception is the fact that the author again decided upon this musical form, which we consider classical, and with good reason.

“…I intended to span the broadest possible spectre of elements not only in relation to the construction of the work, but in relation to the construction of the instruments. I wanted to unite the quintessence of Nature and archaic elements (rhythm as the primal origin of every music, as something that gives birth to music), theatrical qualities and a new articulation of tonality with the ‘classical’ tonal language of this century and produce some kind of – New Music. Only such a unity can represent the free expansion (quasi trans-avantgardism) of present day music…”, I paraphrase the words of Nebojsa Jovan Zivkovic, whose Second Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra represents the musical elucidation of its composer’s credo.

Zivkovic’s three-movement Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra a due, with reinforced percussion section and the harp, resembles the traditional formal solution of a sonata cycle of this kind – only in the number of its movements. Nevertheless, the formal patterns of the movements do not correspond to the traditional distribution: sonata-form, a complex three-part song- rondo. They look more like a series of three musical entities where, owing to the programmatic idea of the work, the sounds of the instruments of totally different cultures first “rival” one another, then unite. The expected soloist cadenza from the first movement, therefore, re-emerges in the last. Nevertheless, even if the author did not follow the classical musical forms in conceiving the concert, the character of this three musical wholes is traditional: the first is the exposition (but not in sonata form), the second movement is slow while the third, not the simple “dance in the circle” of the rondo, but rather a scherzo with an expressionistic, pagan intonation.

As the author himself says, this concerto is a kind of ritual where an individual is accepted into a community after a certain ritual of “initiation”. Symbolically, it is the marimba, an instrument entirely foreign to the classical orchestral ensemble, that is “accepted” into the group. Essentially, involves the problem of conflict between the traditional and the new, where, paradoxically, the new is older than the old. Such a bond in fact represents a unity of folklore music ( taken in the broader sense) with art music, and its final results offers a certain type of ethnic style in the music written at the end of this century.