CROATIAN COMPOSERS' SOCIETY / 5 p.m.

Atli Sveinsson FANTASTICOS RONDOS

Zygmunt Krauze POLYCHROMIE

Scott Roller QUARTET SET

Michael Reudenbach SZENEN, STANDBILDER

Tom Johnson SIMULTANEOUS PROGRESSIONS

Michael Nyman A NEAT SLICE OF SARABAND

Morton Feldman HALF A MINUTE, IT'S ALL I'VE TIME FOR

Edison Denissow D-S-C-H

Branko Lazarin THREE SCHECES FOR THE FOUR* Andante - Moderato- Allegro

Polish composer ZYGMUNT KRAUZE was born in 1938 in Warsaw. He studied the piano with Marija Wilkomirska and Kazimierz Sikorski and composition at the High State School for Music. His studies of composition he continued in Paris with Nadie Boulanger. Since 1963 he has been organizing concerts of new music and music workshops in his home town, he founded a chamber ensemble "Warsztat Muzycny" and from 1971 till 1981 he took part in the programme committee of Warszawska Jesien festival. He is also very active in the International Association for new music, which he presided in 1987. Although many of his compositions were dedicated to different ensembles, they all share the absence of contrast in the way of the images of Wladyslaw Strzemisnki. About Polychromie for clarinet, trombone, violoncello and piano the author wrote: "In my music I use peace and organization. When the work is finished, it reaches from the chaos of human activities and sounds towards particularly structured segment of time. These aims reflect in my music in the developments without contrasts, the aspiration towards the homogeneity. What is revealed to the listener in the first seconds, stays untill the end. There are no surprises. These forms without contrasts in their existence do not have the beginning nor the end. Even with the break, the basic characteristics of the composition do not change. It can be continued endlessly..."

SCOTT ROLLER was born in 1959 in musical family in Amarillo - Texas. He studied at University of Texas in Austin, Ecole normale de musique in Paris and North Texas State University in Denton. From 1980 - 1983 he played violoncello in an improvisational quartet BL Lacert in Dallas, cooperating with dancers, poets, video - and performance - artists and people from the musical theatre. In 1984 he moves to Germany where he continues to improve his composition, studying at Folkwang Hochschule for Musik in Essen, in the class of Nicolaus A. Huber. Since 1990 he is a free -artist violoncellist, teacher and a composer. The composition Quartet Set was written in 1993 on the request of Quartett Avance and was, for the first time, performed at Gaudeamus Musikwoche in Amsterdam. It consists of six parts: Gazes, Metabop, Warlocks, Stages, Metabop too and Shapes in the Matrix. The starting point of the composition are four, so called, warlocks, mostly vertical, rhythmical one-dimensional appearances. While the first three form the third movement, the fourth is worked out and interpolated into the final movement Shapes in the Matrix. On the other hand, Gazes and Stages are oposed as multidimensional time spaces where three currents mingle. Metabops are the movements which develop solo, individualist actions.

German composer MICHAEL REUDENBACH was born in 1956 in Aachen where, with J. Blum and D. Cohon, he studied composition and church music, specializing in Koln and Paris. He teaches at the School for church music in Aachen. With the quartet Szenen, Standbilder, Michael Reudenbach quotes the words of Rolf Dieter Brinkmann from the book Rom, Blicke (Rome,Views): "So inconspicuous, insufficient and accidental impressions contain for me the whole insight into the real state of affairs which surround us, in which our life lies,...To clarify: I do not mean the identification but that those little, transitory impressions are the symbols, but of totally umreal statues (Standbildern) and scenes...the shining ideas, sounds move..."

The American composer TOM JOHNSON was born in 1939 in Greeley, Colorado. He studied music at Yale University in New Haven and privately with Morton Feldman. As he works with simple forms, chosen registres and reduced material, he is known as minimalist, like other members of the same school that use forms, permutations and predictable development. His operas are famous, among others Four Note Opera, Riemannoper and 200 ans. He was also engaged in musical reviews. Since 1983 he has been living in Paris. The composition Simultaneous Progressions for clarinet, trombone, violoncello and piano was written in 1995 on the request of Ensemble Avance and the German Radio. Tom Johnson said: "In this project I was basically interested in the differences between the four instruments. My chamber music is mainly for the homogenous groups like string quartet, the quartet of flutes or four pianos. Here I could use counterpoint in which every musician plays with different sound a totally different material. At the same time I was writting the book "Self-Similar Melodies), so I wanted to use logical development which I already used for some time, but in such a way that for every musician I develop a totally different logic. From every musician I tried to learn more about his abilities and interests and then I wrote for four separate voices, without determining any coordinates between them. I found out that every musician has to play out of his memory. When you once find the logic, with a high level of concentration and intensity, the logical development is not difficult to perform from your memory."

MICHAEL NYMAN was born in 1944 in London where he studied with the composer Alan Bush and the baroque historian Thurston Dart at the Royal Academy of Music and King's College. They roused his interest for early baroque forms of rondo and canon as well as for Rumanian musical folklor. Between 1964 and 1976 he wrote musical reviews for "The Listener", "New Statesman" and "The Spectator". In one of his articles about Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning" he used the term "minimalism" for the first time. He wrote for "Experimental Music - Cage and Beyond" today's basic book about the minimalistic music. At that time he worked in Scratch Orchestra, Portsmouth Sinfonia, ensemble Steve Reich and The Flying Wizards. He accepted the offer from Harrison Birthwistle to adapt Venetian songs for the performance of Goldoni's II Campiello by the London National Theatre. For ad hoc-put-together ensemble of old instruments, which later became Michael Nyman Band, he composed his first compositions. He continued with film music, chamber opera, string quartets, ballet music, cycle of songs using the text of Paul Celan, and concerto for the piano. A Neat Slice of Saraband (1980) was created for Krauz ensemble Warszat Muzycny in the same time as A Neat Slice of Time for the mixed choir and electric piano, using the text of Leonardo da Vinci.

American composer MORTON FELDMAN was born in 1926 in New York where he studied with Wallingford Rieger and Stefan Wolpe, the student of Busoni and Webern. The last years he was teaching at Edgard-Varese department of State University of New York influencing young European composers with the works Why Patterns? and Crippled Symmetry. He died in 1987.

EDISON DENISSOW was born in 1929 in Tomsk (Siberia) where, studying maths, he composed his first works. When Dimitri Šostakovæ has seen them, he pushed him to study music and composition. From 1951 - 1956 he officially studied composition, instrumentalisation and piano with Wissarion Schebalina, Nikolai Rakow and Wladimir Below at Moscow Conservatorium »ajkovski, and privately with Philipp Herskowitz, one of the Rumanian pupils of Anton Webern who ran from Wienna to Moscow. He taught composition in Moscow, where in 1990 he founded the Association for Modern Music. On the request of Pierre Boulez, he worked at the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique at IRCAM in Paris from 1990 till 1991. He still lives in Paris. The composition D-S-C-H is meant as hommage to Dmitrij ©ostakoviË and is dedicated to the Polish composer Zygmut Krauze and the ensemble Musikwerkstatt Warschau. The basic line, consisting of his initials was also used in many compositions by ©ostakoviË. In the second part of the composition appears the quotation of the Eight string quartet, which is actually also the quotation of ©ostakoviË from his own First Symphony (a quotation in the quotation) which is in the final part connected with the original developing material of the composition.

BRANKO LAZARIN (1940) completed his study of composition at the Zagreb Music Academy in the class of prof S. ©ulek . He specialized in Koln with Milko Kelemen. He has composed many works of which some were awarded: orchestral music, chamber, vocal and instrumental music, music for choirs, liturgical ... He works at the Zagreb Music Academy as associate professor where he teaches musical disciplines. The composition Three sketches for four - the quartet for clarinet in B, or alto saxophone in Es, tenor trombone, violoncello and the piano is, formally and structurally, of improvisational character. The title also suggests it in a way. In the first movement Moderato the musical material follows continually in a manner of fantasy The second movement Andante has a tripartite form where the third part is significantly modified in the way that it synthetizes the thematic material of parts A and B. The third movement Allegro relies on rondo scheme.

United in a unique ensemble of different instruments (piano, violoncello, clarinet/saxophone, trombone/Euphonium), the members of AVANCE quartet are together for years and they have achieved high interpretative level of their performance of new music. At the performance they create a happy, experimenting and enjoying atmosphere so the audience can better understand the music. All four members of the Quartet are specialized in new music. They pay equal attention to the choice of composition as to the quality and preciseness of presentation.

In its continual work, the ensemble has a wide repertoire of compositions that are written for it. The following composers created their works for this quartet: Jorg Birkenkotter, Adriana Holszky, Georg Krall, Calus Kuhn, Klaus Ospald and Mathias Spahlinger. Till recently, the constant part of the programme of all concerts was an improvisation by its members. The quartet took part at many festivals of new music (Gaudeamus Musikwoche - Amsterdam, Maifestspiele - Wiesbaden, A'Devantgarde and Musik Biennale München, Musikfest Insel Hombroich). They record for radio and commercial CDs.