Page 175 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2025. Glasbena interpretacija: med umetniškim in znanstvenim┊Music Interpretation: Between the Artistic and the Scientific. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 8

recent slovene music and its interpreters
ago as 1987 they have a firmly established reputation for presenting diffi-
cult contemporary music. It would be impossible in a few words to do any-
thing like justice to their enormous contribution to the development of new
Slovene music by means of the Slowind Festival. Not only did they com-
mission and perform some of the most advanced Slovene music, but also
a large range of music of cutting-edge modernism from many other coun-
tries, mostly in Europe, in performances of the highest standard. Foreign
composers represented included Iannis Xenakis, Gerard Grisey, Brian Fer-
neyhough, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Mathias Pintscher, Elliott Carter
and Rebecca Saunders. Their choice of Slovene works for the Slowind Fes-
tival of 2018 is very notable: Vinko Globokar (Bouquet de paramètres sau-
vages), Lojze Lebič (Dogodki II), Nina Šenk (Scratch, In the Absence, Gvaš/
Gouache), Vito Žuraj (Contour) and Urška Pompe (almost a loneliness). This
was the last festival hosted by Slowind. In her farewell essay Nina Šenk said:

Weighty programmes, each time surprising and convincing and never
placed within the safe framework of established repertoire guidelines,
were year after year an important beacon for everyone who got to know
the festival. 17

The organisation and programmes were now operated under the ti-
tle of Ljubljana New Music Forum (LJNMF) by four musicians, the Slovene
composers Larisa Vrhunc and Nina Šenk, the Slovene musicologist Gregor
Pompe and the American conductor Steven Loy. The aims were exactly the
same as those of Slowind. Larisa Vrhunc made this very clear when recent-
ly referring to Slowind:

They were the ones to guarantee the best performances of the new piec-
es, they were always cautious in commissioning from interesting com-
posers from different generations (and genders) and also programme
either good new pieces by foreign composers or older pieces that had
never been played in Slovenia but were crucial for the development of
music after 1900. 18
In the years 2020–23 new Slovene works performed included those
by Petra Strahovnik (Bistro - Essence), Vinko Globokar (?Corporel), Nev-
ille Hall (et j’entendis des voix, the flames rise to fade in green air), Urška
Pompe (fingers of rain), Matej Bonin (Impetus, Hipno za dva, Impulses V),
th
17 Nina Šenk, in 20 Festival Slowind 2018 [accompanying booklet] (Ljubljana: Slow-
ind, 2018), 3, https://slowind.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Slowind2018-Knjizi-
ca-06T.pdf.
18 Larisa Vrhunc, personal communication, 3 March 2024.

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