Highlight of the evening was the premiere of the composition Sredi Polnoči/Mitten um Mitternacht for soprano, mezzo-soprano, male choir and orchestra by Alois Bröder. In this piece one feels the harmony of the author with the Slovenian poet Srečko Kosovel, the same pulse, the same bend of thoughts and form, which reflects the whole complexity of the poetic expression, which reaches from the expressionism up to the new romantizism and constructionalism. Similarly, however extraordinarily comprehensible, also the actual musical structure of Bröders work is functioning. The composer treats the human voice functionally as a musical instrument and blurs in such a way with the sensitivity of the contemporary the boundaries between the natural one and the artifact. In his music the human voice and the sound of the instrument are related closely to each other, so that soloists, choir and orchestra melt together to an unity. The premiere of the cycle Sredi Polnoči/Mitten um Mitternacht left engraving impressions; the well prepared male part of the RTV Slovenija chamber choir, the technically reliable and expression-clear rendering of the soloists – the soprano Andreja Zakonjšek and the mezzo-soprano Mirjam Kalin – and the balanced playing of the orchestra contributed to it. They conveyed under the baton of Lior Shambadal a convincing musical message.
Stanislav Koblar
(www.finance-on.net, 21.5.2003)