7 Trumpets of the Apocalypse

A concert by five different orchestral ensembles and soloists, with a focus on newly designed brass and woodwind musical instruments, rarely played or as yet unheard on the concert stages.

Cankarjev dom Music 7 Trumpets of the Apocalypse

Massed orchestral performance by the Slovenian Armed Forces Orchestra, the Slovenian Police Orchestra, the RTV Slovenia Big Band and Symphony Orchestras, the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra, and featuring musicians from Germany, Belgium, and Scotland

Program:
Igor Krivokapič: Symphony No. 5 (world premiere)
Jan Van der Roost: Colores (world premiere)

Conductor: Miha Rogina

Co-production: Cankarjev dom, Slovenian Philharmonic, RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Slovenian Armed Forces Orchestra, Slovenian Police Orchestra
In cooperation with: Public Fund for Cultural Activities (JSKD), J'Elle Steiner, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Cultural and Arts Society KUD Dr. Josip Čerin

The concert features a unique intersection of five different orchestral groups - symphony orchestras, a big band, and concert bands, with a focus on newly constructed brass and woodwind musical instruments, seldomly performed or as yet unheard on the concert podia. Musicians from Belgium, Germany, Japan and Scotland will be performing on some of the world’s rarest instruments.

Symphony No. 5 and Colores, new works by Igor Krivokapič and Jan Van der Roost respectively, are to receive their world premiere at the Ljubljana concert.

Extraordinary, one might say terrible, times call for extraordinary, even terrible, means of expression, and I did not refrain from using them in creating this deeply personal work. I thus employed either brand-new mediums of acoustic music (I’ve even devised some of them myself) or relied on the rarely practised ones from the treasury of innovations developed over the last quarter of the millennium in the quest for the perfect sound. I did all this not in the name of extravagance, exhibitionism, exclusivity, let alone a ‘freak show’, but with the express purpose of confessional art as a most insightful and clearest mirror image of our time. In terms of its form, Symphony No. 5 – The Seven Trumpets of the Apocalypse – might at first glance be perceived as your regular programmatic symphony adopting Berlioz’s notion of idée fixe and drawing inspiration from the Biblical narrative of John’s Revelation. This is because the ‘unveiling’ found in this sinister and foreboding final book of the New Testament is supratemporal, even transcending the division between the faithful and the nonbelievers, while also being so much more.
Igor Krivokapič

Colores is Spanish for ‘colours’. Colours… that’s what this composition is about. Musical colours, timbres, sounds, soft and sharp colour tones, sonorous effects… they all are present in this work. It is an abstract composition indeed: no story, scenario or any programmatic inspiration behind the notes. It all together creates an impressive ending of a pretty demanding work – in various ways. It not only requires a (very) large instrumentation, but also brings every section of the wind orchestra in the spotlights: a mature and highly-skilled ensemble is needed in order to perform this piece properly! It is most exceptional to see and hear rare instruments such as a contrabass flute, a subcontrabass saxophone, a contrabass trumpet or an octobass – not to mention the helicon family, being represented in its entirety in this major work!
Jan Van der Roost

Never before has Gallus Hall hosted such a rich variety of unique and special instruments as on this evening:
Baritone helicon, an instrument created in 2012 on the initiative of Slovenian composer Igor Krivokapič, belongs to a family of six new helicons. The only one currently in existence will be played by a Scottish virtuoso, Dr. James Gourlay.
Subcontrabass saxophone, a legendary musical instrument, a veritable Rex Tremendae and one of Adolphe Sax's unfulfilled projects that was realised (165 years later) in Brazil. To date, only one of these instruments has been built by a boutique saxophone maker, J'Elle Steiner. An almost three-metre-high specimen will be played by Primož Fleischman.

Octobass; the largest bowed string instrument that can reach the lower limits of audibility was created on the initiative of Hector Berlioz. The first instrument was made by the famous French luthier Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume around 1850. This evening, the instrument will be played by the Belgian artist Ben Faes.

Contrabass trumpet; the largest member of the trumpet family developed by the legendary American tuba virtuoso, Roger Bobo. One of the four existing ones will be played by Matej Krajter.

Contrabass trombone; a true herald of the Judgement Day – Dies Irae. On this occasion, it will be played by Nejc Kurbos.

Contra-alto, contrabass and subcontrabass flutes will be played by musicians from Berlin: Ulrich Roloff, Klaus Schöpp and Hiko Iizuka.