Collegium Musicum Potsdam Symphony Orchestra

Choir Viva Brežice

Photogallery - concert in Litija

Photogallery - concert in Krško

Carmina Burana - a magnificent music event in the towns of Litija and Krško

On Saturday, 2nd October, the sports centre of Litija Grammar School saw a concert, dedicated to the 20th Day of German Unity. Zbor sv. Nikolaja choir, Choir Viva Brežice in collaboration with the symphonic orchestra Collegium musicum Potsdam and their conductor Knut Andreas, the soloists Urška Žižek, Jože Vidic and Andrej Debevec and the two children's choirs from Litija and Šmartno performed a special work by Carl Orff Carmina Burana. A day before the mentioned concert the same cast performed in a House of Culture Krško.


Over 230 performers filled the visitors of the sports centre hall of Litija Grammar School with enthusiasm (Photo: Gregor Požun)

The main theme of collaboration was the 80th anniversary of the birth of a conducting legend Carlos Kleiber, whose carrier started in Potsdam and who spent his last years in Konjšica near Litija, married to a Slovene girl.

Collaboration with German musician was set three years ago, when the then Slovenian cultural attaché in Berlin Monika Kartin Duh made a link between the conductor of the orchestra Knut Andreas and the chorus master of Zbor sv. Nikolaja Litija Choir Helena Fojkar Zupančič, who invited three other Slovenian choirs to join the project: Choir Viva Brežice and their chorus master Simona Rožman Strnad, Saint Nicholas Children's Choir, The Children's Choir of Šmartno Primary School and three elite Slovene soloists.

Two hundred and thirty musicians performed under the lead of German conductor Andreas Knut, who conducted the whole work Carmina Burana by heart and made a great impression on the singers and the listeners with his relax and live interpretation of individual parts.


Soloists Jože Vidic - baritone, Urška Žižek - soprano, Andrej Debevec - tenor and the conductor Knut Andreas from Germany (Photo: Iztok Urbančič)

Nine hundred listeners who came to Litija from places near and far and rewarded the performers by standing ovations after the concert prove that such concerts are wanted outside the capital city as well.

After the concert, Vito Primožič, the editor and director of Astrum Music Publications, wrote: »At the concert everything – from organized arrival/parking, volunteers directing traffic, receiving tickets, hostesses in the concert hall … to the well prepared soloists, the guest German orchestra and the wonderful singing of the well prepared choirs – everything was in superlatives. Concert organizers in Slovene megalopolises could learn a lot in Litija.”


Chorus masters Simona Rožman Strnad, Helena Fojkar Zupančič, Klavdija Bric and Selma Gradišek (Photo: Iztok Urbančič)

Four successful concerts, two in Germany and two in Slovenia, are a good enough reason to plan more collaboration of German and Slovene musicians in the future.

Concert critique
Črt Sojar Voglar, academic musician, composer
On Saturday, 2nd October, the sports centre of Litija Grammar School hosted a monumental cantata Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. The performers were the symphonic orchestra Collegium musicum Potsdam, Choir Viva Brežice, Zbor sv. Nikolaja Litija Choir, Saint Nicholas Children's Choir and the Children's Choir of Šmartno Primary School. The collaboration of these music groups started this summer when they performed together in Germany and in Krško a day before the concert in Litija. The concert was dedicated to the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the birth of a late conductor Carlos Kleiber and the 20th Day of German Unity. It was a magnificent event, never before seen in Litija.

Carmina Burana is a difficult piece of work for any choir and orchestra. The musicians must be in good physical condition and prepared for timely response to rhythmic changes. The sports centre hall in comparison to any concert hall cannot offer the right elements of Orff’s music; therefore it demands the performers to have a more sensual approach to the sound and to the listening to individual groups. The vigorous young conductor Knut Andreas completed his task with excellence; he successfully kept the sound relations and skilfully coordinated the orchestra and the choirs. The orchestra Collegium musicum, which is not a professional orchestra but unites amateur musicians, made a maximum effort with regard to its abilities. There were moments when the percussions were late in the rhythm and the horns had a few problems with intonation. The best performance had the string instruments, the trumpets and the trombones.

The choirs (prepared by Helena Fojkar Zupančič, Simona Rožman Strnad, Klavdija Zupančič and Selma Gradišek) were the music bodies with the best quality of the evening. The intonation was perfect, the lyrics was clear, the light sounded sopranos were the best. The male part of the choir showed a lot of energy and luckily they did not cross the limit of shouting. We cannot overlook the soloists, whose quality performance varied: the sovereign and always well-prepared baritone Jože Vidic was in spite of his efforts in certain moments a bit lost in the sound mass. The soprano Urška Žižek is reliable regarding intonation, her voice is loud and easily heard, yet this also made her gradually lose sensuality in higher tones. The tenor Andrej Debevec was convincing enough when presenting a swan on a grill.

The concert was accompanied by well directed light effects, which gave the performance an extra multimedia charm. The organization of the concert was at a top level, comparable with any event on national level in Slovenia. The thrilled audience in the completely full sports centre hall awarded the orchestra and the singers with standing ovations.


Nova kultura Litija, Valvazorjev trg 1, SI-1270 Litija, Slovenija | e-mail: info@litija.org