Ivo Maček
Ivo Maček | |
---|---|
Born | 24 March 1914 |
Died | 26 May 2002 | (aged 88)
Era | 20th century |
Works | http://quercus.mic.hr/quercus/person/306 |
Ivo Maček (24 March 1914 – 26 May 2002) was a prominent Croatian pianist, composer, teacher, editor and academician. He was born in Sušak on 24 March 1914 and died in Zagreb on 26 May 2002. On account of his diverse social work, for his work as pianist, composer and editor, he was the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions.[1]
Life
Ivo Maček was born in Sušak on 24 March 1914 and died in Zagreb on 26 May 2002. He inherited his love for music from his parents, Dr Pavao (1880–1932) and Marija Maček née Heffler (1892–1978). And while his father, a history and geography teacher, played "two or three instruments" in his youth, his mother learned piano and violin and played the viola in the Society Orchestra of the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb until her death in 1978. In 1922, he started his music education with a private teacher, Vjekoslav Rosenberg-Ružić (1870–1954). From the very next year he went on studying the piano with Rosenberg-Ružić in the Junior Music School in Zagreb, and then in the Secondary Music School (1927–1931), and then at the High School of the State Music Academy in Zagreb. In 1934, just a year after graduating from the Second Classics High School in Zagreb, he took a certificate in the piano, his major, taking the Vjekoslav Klaić Prize of the Croatian Music Institute as the best student of the year.
When his course was over, Maček went to
Maček took up chamber music in the Secondary Music School. In the context of the school's own performances from 1928 to 1933, the talented young pianist in his earliest chamber outings showed both musicality and a brilliant ability to accommodate his playing to the soloist. Later, as a leading chamber musician, he was founder-member of two celebrated piano trios. His collaboration with violinist Stjepan Šulek and violinist Stanko Žepić (from 1935 to 1939) started not long after the end of Maček's studies at the Music Academy. They drew favourable comments from the public in a concert in the Croatian Music Institute on 16 May 1938, playing for the first time Maček's Piano Trio. In the opinion of the reviewers, Maček had shown in this compositional first-born that he had both talent and knowledge; he had successfully mastered the form, adroitly worked out the ideas in terms of motifs, made use of interesting harmonies and successfully combined the three instruments.
The best known Croatian piano trio, Maček – Šulek – Janigro, was founded at Maček's initiative. During their five years of working together (from 1940 to 1945) they interpreted works of different stylistic periods, opening up the roads for their own artistic maturation and virtuosity and the capacity for a profound understanding of what they performed. In association with cellist Antonio Janigro (1939 to 1941; 1944 to 1949) and Ludwig Hoelscher (1942), with Enrico Mainardi (1949 to 1950, 1953) and Mirko Dorner (from 1952 to 1953), Maček stood out as an excellent, reliable and valuable accompanist. The most successful of all these associations was with Mirko Dorner, in a duo with whom he won the first prize at the 3rd international music competition in Vercelli (1952). After many years of absence from public musical life (he gave his last chamber concert in 1957), Maček returned to the concert stage with the cellist Valter Dešpalj (from 1975 to 1979). During his chamber career, Maček worked with the violinists
Work
Three composers were particularly influential in the shaping of Maček's composing personality. He studied composition at the Music Academy in Zagreb with Franjo Dugan Sr (1874–1948), who, employing Romantic expressive resources in his oeuvre, also used elements of Baroque polyphony as a support on which to hang firmly rounded forms. Thanks to a French government scholarship from 1939 to 1940, he went on with his studies with Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse (1873–1954), who, as composer, was uncompromising in rejecting the sentimental outpourings of late Romanticism and its conservative patterns and developed his style on elements of what was then up-to-date French music. In 1942 Maček went to Salzburg to Joseph Marx's (1882–1964). The music of this Austrian composer breathed the spirit of French Impressionism, and successfully conjoined the beauty of lush melody with harmonic refinement.
The composing personality of Ivo Maček was formed in a classical mould. He drew on the best patterns of earlier centuries, but also paid heed to the speech of his time. In his creative work he did not aspire for radical changes, had a circumspect attitude to contemporary musical trends and did not show any experimental audacity in his work. His oeuvre comprises sixteen compositions, two for choirs, six for piano, seven for various chamber ensembles, and one composition for piano and chamber orchestra. The two choral compositions are in fact motets in the classical polyphonic style: Gressus meos, for a four-part mixed choir, and Confortamini for a five-part mixed choir, composed during his composition studies at the Music Academy in Zagreb (in 1934). The piano compositions of Ivo Maček are good examples of his composing poetics. They reflect a composer who had developed while creating music primarily via the piano medium. Unlike the Romantic saturation of the piano texture of his earlier compositions (Intermezzo, 1935; Improvisation, 1937; Theme and Variations, 1939), the later compositions (Sonatina, 1977; Sonata, 1985; Prelude and Toccata, 1987 and Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra, 1991) had a lighter and more transparent facture, dominated by thematically more profiled ideas. In the piano
The major part of his oeuvre is made up of chamber compositions: Piano Trio (1935), Sonata for Violin and Piano (1955), 1st String Quartet (1980), Sonata for Violin and Piano (1985), Wind Quintet (1987), Wind Trio (1994) and 2nd String Quartet (1997). They are perhaps the best example of the evolutionary line of Maček’s composing work. The first Maček chamber composition, Trio for Violin,
Maček as a teacher
In parallel with his career in piano and in composing, Ivo Maček had a third string to his bow, the educational. His work in education was started when he was a teacher of piano at the Lisinski Private Music School in Zagreb (1936–1939). Working as a rehearsal pianist in the
As well as all this, Ivo Maček found time to carry out the duties of a delegate of the Council for Education at the final examinations of secondary music schools. In addition, from 1968 to 1970 he taught music, as guest professor, at the international music seminars of the
Works
- String Quartet No 1 (1980)
- String Quartet No 2 (1995)
- Concertino for piano and chamber orchestra (1991)
- Two classical motets – Confortamini and Gressus meos for four-part mixed choir (1934)
- Elegy for piano
- Improvisation for piano (1937)
- Intermezzo for piano (1935)
- Prelude and Toccata for piano (1987)
- Wind Quintet (1987)
- Wind Trio (1994)
- Romantic Trio for piano, violin and cello (1935)
- Sonata for piano (1985)
- Sonata for violin and piano (1985)
- Sonata for cello and piano in A minor (1955)
- Sonatina for piano (1977)
- Theme With Variations for piano (1939)[2]
References
- ^ a b c d "'Ivo Maček: Trio for Violin, Violoncello and Piano "Romantic"'". www.mic.hr. MIC.
- ^ "'Ivo Maček'". quercus.mic.hr. MIC.
Further reading
- Zubović, Alma (2014): Ivo Maček, Glazbenički i skladateljski profil