From the explanation of Ph.D. Zdenka Weber:
“Jurica Murai” award for the best interpretation.
For the best artistic interpretation to the violinist Sreten Krstić and the Zagreb Soloists for the performance of the cycle “Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi at the concert on September 30, 2018 in the Church of St. Nicholas.
Zagreb soloists in the composition of Sreten Krstić, concert master, Krunoslav Marić, Saki Kodama Bedić, Davor Philips, Mislav Pavlin and Ivan Novinc, violins, Hrvoje Philips and Marko Otmačić, violas, Smiljan Mrčela and Zlatko Rucner, cellos, Mario Ivelja, double bass and Pavao Mašić, harpsichord proposed a program for the performance at the 4 8th Varaždin Baroque Evenings, which included as many as nine concerts composed by Antonio Vivaldi (Venice, 1678 – Vienna, 1741), was one of the most exceptional geniuses of Italian baroque music. The flutist Dani Bošnjak also performed in the Concerto for flute and strings in D major, Il gardellino, RV 428.
Although the orientation of the VBV is mainly on ensembles that perform the repertoire of the Baroque period on instruments replicas of authentic musical instruments, the inclusion of the oldest Croatian chamber string ensemble in this year’s festival program in the jubilee 65th year of its existence proved to be an excellent choice. The Zagreb soloists are known on international concert stages for performing anthology works of all musical styles and eras, and now, under the guidance of concert master Sreten Krstić, they have shown excellent technical and interpretive abilities for sounding the baroque musical idiom.
The highlight of their musicianship was certainly the second part of the concert, in which the concertmaster of the ensemble, Sreten Krstić, performed as a soloist in the performance of Vivaldi’s cycle Le quattro stagioni, The Four Seasons, which includes four concertos for violin and strings. For this cycle by Vivaldi, created in 1721, it is almost possible to say that “even the sparrows are singing it”, and the individual musical evocation of each season, which Vivaldi so ingeniously described with strings, is globally used, and often abused. However, the interpretation we had the opportunity to hear in the Varaždin Church of St. Nicholas on September 30 brought so many new sound vibrations to a specially designed version of individual concerts connected by interludes, with which the soloist Sreten Krstić realized a stylistically perfectly functioning whole, so much new musical energy, dynamic and agogic nuances, so much violinistic virtuosity, as much from the soloist Krstić as from all members of the ensemble, that the reaction of all the numerous people present was first a “eloquent” silence and then a stormy applause that turned into long-lasting standing ovations. Indeed, something quite special, a unique experience of music, and the reaction of us who followed the festival as a festival jury was the only possible one, that is, a unanimous decision to award the “Jurica Murai” Award for the best interpretation to violinist Sreten Krstić and the Zagreb soloists.