Dalibor Grubacevic - Musical Gravities (2024) Hi-Res

Dalibor Grubačević is a sought-after author of film music, and he is no stranger to feature films or documentaries in this regard. That is exactly why the author of the essay on his new album, LP Musical Gravities, Karolina Rugle, rightly calls this musician, composer and music producer "synonymous with film music in Croatia".

With the album Musical Gravities, Grubačević now shows his other side, that of a composer of classical art music. It includes a number of chamber and orchestral, as well as concert performances from his oeuvre. The album includes the following compositions: Diptych for tuba quartet, Valse Balkanique for brass quintet, Čardas suite for strings and Concerto for tuba and orchestra.

With his recorded works, Grubačević presents himself as an interesting and fruitful composer of classical art forms, and his relevance in this field is best confirmed by the first-class ensembles, orchestras and musicians who recorded his works: the XL Tuba Quartet, the brass ensemble BC Brass, then the Zagreb Soloists and finally The Zagreb Philharmonic led by maestro Alan Bjelinski with our tuba virtuoso Krunoslav Babić as a soloist.

Regarding the compositions on the album, as well as his concept that stems from them, Grubačević declares:

I wrote the diptych for the tuba quartet for that group, wanting to move away from the previous sound and "grab" a little more into the impressionist-modernist sound, and still keep some of my own stylization that I use more often. It is also the most recent song on the album.

Valse Balkanique (Balkan waltz) was commissioned by the BC Brass quintet, the idea was to use stylistically some figures and scales closer to the Balkan region, but during the creation a small "twist" occurred and a tango appeared that is not specific to our region, but it made it interesting, melodic and interesting, which is why I decided to keep it in the work. In the end, I called the piece a waltz.

The Čardaš suite for strings is dedicated to the Zagreb soloists, but also to the city of Koprivnica, and was first performed in 2021 as part of the City Day, and the audience then received it brilliantly. It is also a composition that consists of quite a few ethno-elements, mostly those that characterize the area of Podravina and Međimurje.

I wrote the concerto for tuba and orchestra in 2021 at the urging of Krunoslav Babić. The concert was originally supposed to be up to 12 minutes long, but in the end it turned out to be 4 movements and 20 minutes long. It is melodic, I present the tuba in a romantic spirit, with a lot of dynamics, but also epic moments.

For these reasons, I named the album Musical Gravities. It's musically diverse, and yet I think I've kept my stylization and way of musical expression.

The compositions were recently recorded in a studio in the Domoljub Hall in Koprivnica, while the recording of the Tuba Concerto comes from a live performance from 2023, held in the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall as part of the Zagreb Philharmonic Off Cycle.

The sound recorders on the album were Tomislav Horvatinović and Vinko Vidović, and the music production was signed by Dalibor Grubačević himself. The cover of the richly decorated LP is dominated by the painting Dark Matter by contemporary Koprivnica artist Gordana Špoljar Andrašić.