A concert of joy and youth

Conductor Živa Ploj Peršuh is an exceptionally charismatic and versatile musician, devoting herself to many musical genres, and she is also passionately committed to educating children and young musicians in a friendly rather than typically academic way. The concert of mainly film music that she prepared with her budding talents took place on 21 August as part of the Ljubljana Festival. Križanke was sold out, or as the presenter put it, Marcel Štefančič, a lucid and witty interpreter of the pieces and a film connoisseur par excellence: “The stadium is full, we have all come to the right place, let's begin!” 

“Živa Ploj Peršuh is breaking new ground with her projects. The soil is fertile; music schools cannot be accused of barrenness or, God forbid, lack of professionalism, not at all – the schools are a wonderful pool of knowledge and a fairly pure source of music – but what this conductor achieves is an upgrade in the truest sense of the word. To assemble every year (I believe this is already the sixth time) an orchestra of musicians who sign up for this music campus in such a way that after one week the orchestra makes music, pulses with the intent of professional standards, plays with joy and fervour, seeks clarity and is so driven that in some respects even professionals could learn from them – that is not easy.”
– Jože Štucin

And so they began. Music at full throttle, literally, as the stage was occupied to the very last corner. The conductor once again succeeded in forming The Slovenian Youth Orchestra, in which musicians of different ages and levels of education take part, roughly ranging from 12 to 26 years of age, and in just over a week, with the help of tireless assistants for each instrumental section, she prepared a first-rate programme with them. It may not be amiss to list the assistants and creative collaborators, as during the first three days of sectional rehearsals they prepared the young people for ensemble playing: Tea Plesničar (harp), Jan Sever (piano), Urban Turjak (trombone), Nina Pečar (musical improvisation), Miha Mitev (bassoon), Tomaž Kukovič (clarinet), Matjaž Porovne and the Deyan Muc (violin), Monika Trilar Babič (oboe), Sarah Akif (horn), Stevan Jovanović (double bass), Ema Bajc (flute), Katja Žekar (viola), Sebastian Bertoncelj (cello), Matjaž Drevenšek (saxophone), Petra Vidmar (percussion), Jure Gradišnik (trumpet), Leonardo Calligaris (bassoon), Ivan Mijačević (somatics), Rado Jaušovec (physical theatre), Urša Strehar Benčina (theatre improvisation) and Boštjan Božič (video production).

With her team, the conductor rehearsed a demanding and stylistically varied programme of film pieces that have become hits on concert stages. A glance at the concert programme already reveals the key content: there are numbers from the cartoon Tom and Jerry Scott Bradley, Waltz of the Flowers Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Mascagni's Intermezzo from the opera Cavalleria rusticana and Bernstein's Mambo from the musical West Side Story and, of course, without the brilliant Nino Rota and his melodies from the film The Godfather such a concert would be unthinkable. Personally, I only missed a piece by Ennio Morricone, who filled Križanke some years ago. Among Slovenian composers of film hits, we heard the almost folk-song-like Leave us this world from the film Čisto pravi gusar by Jani Golob and his greatest film hit, Poletje v školjki, and at the end they were joined by Robert Pešut – Magnifico with his Pukni zoro, written with such a refined feeling for Balkan melos that many thought it was an old folk song. On a home stage, the music of Marjan Kozina is also an absolute must, with the immortal pieces from the film Kekec. The latter is a kind of identification code of Slovenian music education, and there is probably no one who could not sing the songs from the films that ennobled our childhood. But so that the orchestra's performance would not be merely a medley of well-known film hits, the young musicians also rehearsed a concerto for electric bass guitar and symphony orchestra with the meaningful title Entropia, signed both as composer and live performer by the Finnish rock-jazz musician Lauri Porra. The piece has all the dimensions of a concerto: four contrasting movements, it opens up space for different tonal colours, and the solo pulse (beat) throbbed under the fingers of the bassist, who strung together every possible kind of playing: highly poetic melodiousness, aggressive hard-rock toughness, a few surges of spontaneity and pure free music-making, all within the framework of a relevant score, for which the musicians provided fundamental support. One of the most impressive and interesting pieces for such an ensemble that we have ever heard here. A kind of reincarnation of Romanticism in an extreme way, overflowing with feeling, where the soul is exposed in tone, where the heartbeat becomes a rhythmic sign that cuts to the essence of music. A wonderful work, imbued with expressions and voices from the depths of the soul, perhaps even from the seed sown by Jean Sibelius unexpectedly planted in his great-grandson. Praise for this transcendent part of the concert, praise for the effect of this music on the young performers and for the superb performance of everyone. Not everything is drill, not everything is just school; music is a universe where stars are born without preconceived conventions, just like that, out of pure joy, but above all out of the need and urgency to express vitality, to affirm being, an artistic voice that cannot be ignored.

Živa Ploj Peršuh is breaking new ground with her projects. The soil is fertile; music schools cannot be accused of barrenness or, God forbid, lack of professionalism, not at all – the schools are a wonderful pool of knowledge and a fairly pure source of music – but what this conductor achieves is an upgrade in the truest sense of the word. To assemble every year (I believe this is already the sixth time) an orchestra of musicians who sign up for this music campus in such a way that after one week the orchestra makes music, pulses with the intent of professional standards, plays with joy and fervour, seeks clarity and is so driven that in some respects even professionals could learn from them – that is not easy. What we have in mind here, of course, are the sparkles in the eyes, joyful hearts, care and a passionate desire for balance, orchestral breathing with one pair of lungs. The conductor has charisma. How to capture one hundred and six young musicians in such a curriculum – some of them already first-rate performers, many at the start of their journey – and convince them that music is not only perfection of expression, but sincere expression of the perfection of music. And above all, the joy and delight of life.

Music is in the soul and the heart; performance is merely a way of approaching artistic truth, which is in essence everything a person has. The rest is illusion, filler and mental Coca-Cola. All the rehearsals and hard work of one good week are therefore blood, sweat and tears, repaid by the pleasure of passing music on to others. And the audience, even if full of grandfathers and grandmothers, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers and, of course, many supporters of the young musicians, felt this pulse and grasped the creation that before our eyes “sang hosanna to the creative spirit”.