Angels look like…
for Flute, Clarinet, Harp, Violin, Violoncello, Double Bass, Percussions (2 players), Soprano and Actress (2019)
During my ERASMUS exchange in CNSMD Lyon where I worked with Professor Martin Matalon, I wrote this piece for the student’s concert. I find the poem I chose (for the text for the soprano) to be both beautiful and ugly: the title doesn’t say it but (spoiler alert!) inside the poem it says that angels look like cows. This sentence occupied me so much that I wanted to write a piece and explore the extreme beauty of subtle orchestration and at the same time extreme noise as something ‘ugly’. Although it can be the opposite…why ‘the ugly’ can’t be ‘the beautiful’?
Pulsar
for Piano, Harp, Celesta and String orchestra (max.10-8-6-4-3) (2017)
This piece is my first one that gained recognition since with it I earned the Rector’s reward in 2017. It is my early piece still written mostly in extended tonality and it had a great performance led by Quentin Hindley and students of Music Academy, University of Zagreb: soloists Juraj Marko Žerovnik (piano), Veronika Ćiković (harp), Dora Lovrečić (celesta), and string orchestra. Performance video coming soon.
Solo
for Wind Quintet, String Quartet, Harp, Piano, Percussions (2 players), Chess player and Conductor (2021)
This is my second piece where I wrote the conductor’s part too: his way of conducting, moving, positions, but also acting. He has the role of a nervous and pretentious person who hates his ensemble. Similarly, most of the players have some kind of role such as veteran chess player (piano) who is annoyed by bad chess game (the actor playing chess on stage), aggressive percussionist, a paranoid violist who is afraid of percussionist, a cool person who doesn’t care for anything (trombone), really bad poet who reads out loud his lines (bassoon) and so on… The first idea was to describe the typical behavior of people during lockdown2020, bored, scared, quasi-artistic, rebellious… but it developed into such specific personalities that the title Solo explains something more general, like what we actually behave like when being alone, when no one is watching us. And then we are really natural, embarrassing and strange.
First performance will be held in Music Biennale Zagreb 2021 on 20th of April.
Sleep Teases a Man
for Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon, Trumpet, Trombone, Harp, Piano and Strings (a uno or 3-3-2-2-1) (2017, 2020)
I find this piece as one of the most significant to me because of circumstances: during writing my musicology thesis in 2017 I decided not to compose for 1 year and this was the first piece I wrote after my break in an extremely short time. It was also the period when I discovered Daniil Kharms on whose text I wrote this piece, since then I wrote 5 more pieces on his texts including my second opera. After a year of hard work on my musicology thesis, for me composing this piece was a liberating joke and also the first step towards music theatre and humor-based compositions. The form is following the poem, but mostly the extreme of its meaning. Form: calm-> aggressive-> very calm-> more aggressive-> atmospherically calm-> noise-> silence-> unbearable-> the most unexpected ending.
In 2020 I came back to this piece and decided to improve some parts and also added conductor part in a way he has to speak, move or act in a particular way. Ensemble members mostly whisper about reasons why are they sleepy.
Helena Skljarov 