LAUROS
...LauROS... ...one word-two souls... ...one name-two names...
...Laura, Romana... ...Romana, Laura...
...LauRO.......one word-two musics......two instruments - one instrument... ...Laura, Romana......Romana, Laura...
...Lau-Laura......RO-Romana......Laura, Romana......Romana, Laura... ...Lau-RO......Laura-Romana......Lau-RO...
...LauROS...
"...The two of us, young girls, had the same aim: music first, and then friendship; we shared the same glee or sadness, constantly rushing from one place to the other and, while doing so, making jokes and teasing ourselves; we were one body, there was absolute mutual understanding between us, a harmony that is only rarely achieved, when one would get going, the other one would stop, you just cannot manage it, although you have to, I would have done anything for her, as she would have done anything for me, we were the best possible company for one another; everyone could wish for such perfect friendship, we used to laugh and cry together, we used to have a tough time in our endless rehearsals or on our journeys and voyages, we used to touch and examine the just found concert premises, we used to be happy about the newly discovered acoustics, each and every church, landscape. new faces, especially those of children and aged people.
It was as if we had been permeating and changing each other: at first Romana was a sleepyhead, whereas I was an early riser and eager beaver, she was a light eater, unlike me, and her diet was strictly controlled. In the end, as we spent more and more time together, there was a turn-about from time to time: I started sleeping longer and eating less, whereas she became a great eater. We used to support each other in avoiding all kinds of love offers, strange manager ideas, we would justify each other's abrupt "illness"; on the other hand, there were times when we had to use nearly all our feminine charm in order, for example, to cause a stoker to make up for the delay and bring us to the concert on time. And so we rushed crazily from one end of our country to the other, from Osor to Dubrovnik and back again, with the wind or without it in her blond and in my reddish hair; in our careers so far, in the rain or sweltering heat, we have covered more kilometres than many long-distance lorry drivers, we were familiar with every new hole on Croatian roads, we became experts for waves and winds, the sun and clouds, we used to know the timetables of car-ferries by heart, we were familiar with the names and secrets of their crews..."
Violinist LAURA VADJON graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Music (in the classes of Vinko Fabris and Maja Dešpalj- Begović) where she also won her master's degree. She received additional training in various master courses with renowned violin teachers (Neaman, Tchugayeva, Schwarzberg, Fedotov, Grumlykova, Straus, Frischenschläger). She was the winner of numerous prizes and awards (Vice-Chancellor Award of the Zagreb University and Croatian Music Institute Award in 1993, Croatian Composers' Society Award in 1995, Stjepan Šulek Award in 1996, University Staff Society Award in 1998). She has performed as a soloist with many orchestras and chamber ensembles, and most often in a duo with guitarist Romana Matanovac.
She regularly appears at various music festivals at home and abroad. In the field of baroque music, she closely collaborates with organist and harpsichordist Mario Penzar, and she has also been a member of the Vadjon-Pustički-Lazar String Trio. From 1997 to 2002 she was a member of the Zagreb Soloists
with whom she frequently performed solo-parts in many violin concertos. Her compact disc Four Seasons (with a recording of Vivaldi's concerto cycle of the same title) brought her the Croatian Record Award Porin for the best interpretation in the year 2002. Ever since 1995 she has been playing the baroque violin in the ensembles Vox Antiqua and Grenzüberschreitendes Trio-Quartett and has been studying the authenticity of performing practice and interpretation with prominent baroque violinists (Mitchell, Shulakovsky, Moonen and Mackintosh). She has been the concert master and solo violinist of the Croatian Baroque Ensemble ever since its foundation (1999). She has performed in Croatia, Italy, France, Greece, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Spain, Turkey, Belgium, Russia and Japan. She records for the Croatian Radio and Television. In 2001 and 2002 she took part in the course on basso continuo as a guest lecturer at the master workshop Giovanni Battista Boni da Cortona in Tuscany (Italy), together with organist Christopher Stembridge and harpsichordist Ella Sevskaya. She has also been engaged in teaching chamber music (baroque and classical periods) as assistant lecturer at the Zagreb Academy of Music.
Guitarist ROMANA MATANOVAC attended the Elly Bašić Music Education School majoring in the guitar and graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Music, in the class of István Römer. From 1996 to 1999 she was enrolled in post-graduate studies at the Salzburg Mozarteum University, studying under Eliot Fisk and Joaquin Clerch. She received additional training in master courses with many internationally renowned guitarists (D. Russell, C. Cotsiolis, V. Mikulka, J. Codina, G. Listeš, V. Dešpalj etc.). Both as a soloist and as a member of chamber ensembles, she has given over three hundred concerts in Croatia and abroad, most of them in a duo with Laura Vadjon. She was the winner of numerous prizes and awards, such as the first prize of the Croatian Musicians' Society at the Darko Lukić Competition (1995), the first prize of the Croatian Radio and Television at the Young Musicians' Contest Radio Podium (1996), the fourth prize at the Fernando Sor International Guitar Competition in Rome (1994).
As an excellent graduate and post-graduate student, she was granted scholarships by the Zagreb University, the City of Zagreb and the Government of the Republic of Austria. From 1991 to 1996 she taught the guitar at the Elly Bašić Music School in Zagreb. She also graduated from the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, where she is presently enrolled in post-graduate studies in civil-law sciences. She passed the bar examination in 2001. Romana Matanovac has been successfully interweaving her both artistic and legal professions through quite a number of activities in the field of copyright and culture in general. Since 1998 she has been legal advisor in the Croatian Composers' Society Collecting Society (HDS ZAMP)- the professional service for music copyrights, and since 2002 the head of the Department of media, mechanical rights and new technologies. She was one of the founders of the Croatian Copyright Society and has been its secretary ever since its foundation (1999). She took part in the production of a draft bill of a copyright law in the Republic of Croatia. She has been collaborating with numerous institutions and organizations in the field of culture and art, such as the Croatian Film Directors' Society, Croatian Musicians' Society etc. She was one of the representatives of the Republic of Croatia in the project of the Council of Europe within the Mosaic programme. She has been one of the executive producers of the Music Biennale Zagreb, International Festival of Contemporary Music.
Composer and jurist IVO JOSIPOVIĆ (1957) has been one of the leading personalities in the fields of culture and law in Croatia. After having completed his studies at the Zagreb Academy of Music, he spent several years lecturing at the same institution and he has been professor at the Faculty of Law. He was the first vice-president of the World Federation of the Jeunesse Musicale, longtime secretary general of the Croatian Composers' Society, and since 1991 director of the International Festival of Contemporary Music - Music Biennale Zagreb. He is a member of several artistic, professional and scientific bodies and associations at home and abroad, and an elected member of the World Academy of Art and Science. He has received many prizes and awards, the most important being the Grand Prix of the European Radio Union at the MFMO
International Festival and the Boris Papandopulo Award of the Croatian Composers' Society. Many of his works have been performed at world-famous concert halls. Here is what Josipović said about his frequently performed work, that has also been recorded for radio and television and lent the title to this compact disc: "The piece LauROS was composed in 1999, at the suggestion of Laura Vadjon and Romana Matanovac, and was first performed at the Osor Musical Evenings, a music festival laying special emphasis on new works by Croatian composers. Its slightly mysterious title is actually a sort of anagram made from the initial letters of the names of the two artists (Lau-RO) and from the name of the town of Osor (Os). The composition shows typical postmodernistic methods, combining 'classical' and 'avant-garde' means of expression. In a rondo-like form, rhapsodic sections alternate with aleatoric, elegiac moods alternate with lively, balancing between tender lyricism and aggressive virtuosity." In this composition music seems to be going round in circles, coming closer and moving away, now larger, now smaller, now more blurred, now clearer and more illuminated. Just like a woman, it keeps asking the same question over and over again that receives merely scraps of a possible answer, arriving with difficulty. One of them is an unexpectedly fine harmonic nuance with which the guitar in a very upset manner surprises the violin's persistent rondo-query leaving it speechless. However, just like in real life, the central question of music remains standing in space like a real object, and the answer, split into tiny, only barely audible bits-episodes, hopelessly hovers in the air all around it. What we have here is a tragedy, but everything is performed in a seemingly light and diaphanous manner, with a refined oriental smile, and it is precisely in it that the composer's mastery is reflected.
D. Detoni