CONCERTO SEMICLASSICO

Composer Vít (by his own name, Siegfried) Clar was born in Tábor on 15 November 1936 to the family of an outstanding design engineer of Austrian origin. After the leaving examination at a grammar school he graduated from a Vocational Music Pedagogical School, violoncello class. Subsequently he was forced to work as a packer of waste paper at the Sběrné suroviny (Scrap Materials) company, and as a co-driver and driver with the Prague Refrigeration Plants. As late as 1962 the regime allowed him to assert himself in artistic profession.

As one of the founding members of a local KAN (Club of Committed Non-Party Men) organization and a signatory to the "2000 Words" appeal, he was removed, in the spring of 1969, from the position of a theatre conductor, but in the autumn of the same year he took up, on the competitive basis, a job at the then People’s Conservatory (now the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory), where he was, until recently, a much-acclaimed professor of composition.

Vít Clar studied composition with Vadim Petrov, Václav Dobiáš and, in particular, Václav Trojan. On an international scale, he is has been put in connection with the generation of American minimalists, but his means of expression are rather different.

The long list of Vít Clar’s musical activities includes a wide range of compositions, ranging from chamber and vocal works, symphonic and film music, to the field of the so-called "higher pop".

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NÉNIE – composition for alto saxophone and string orchestra, is an elegy for the composer’s suddenly deceased friend Eugen Jegorov, an internationally renowned jazz saxophonist. On a recording, it was premiered by the top-ranking American saxophonist Deryll Kennedy, in concert by the foremost Czech alto saxophonist Ivan Myslikovjan.

Listen to a sample - NÉNIE

CONCERTO SEMICLASSICO for guitar and strings combines Spanish elements, and partly also Iberoamerican (familiar with the composer) and other ones, with the form of the classical Italian instrumental concert. The performance of the first, sonata movement, scored for the solo instrument, makes considerably high technical demands on the player. The virtuoso revision of the cadence, placed, rather unusually, before the conclusion of the third movement, comes from the pen of the guitarist Josef Mazan.

Listen to a sample - CONCERTO SEMICLASSICO, 2nd movement