Ivan Padovec (Johann Padowetz, Jean Padovetz, 1800–1873), born in Varaždin in present-day Croatia, must be considered as one of the most outstanding musicians of his country and one of the most important virtuosos and composers for the guitar in the mid-nineteenth century, when the instrument was already in a state of popular decline.

At age 18, Padovec – who already knew how to play the violin – became infected by the ‘guitaromanie’, induced by a visit to Vienna, the metropolis of the guitar at the time. In April and May 1818, the celebrated guitarist Mauro Giuliani played several concerts with the pianist Ignaz Moscheles and the violinist Joseph Mayseder; they also performed movements from Giuliani’s Concerto for Terz Guitar and Orchestra op. 70. Stimulated by Giuliani’s compositions and his virtuoso performances, Padovec learned to play the guitar with the method of Bartolomeo Bortolazzi. Living in Zagreb, he studied also piano and theory with the cantor Karl Wisner von Morgenstern. Padovec was a founding member of the Zagreb Music Association (1827) and became an important figure in the musical life of his country, as a performer, teacher and composer. Encouraged by his success as a guitarist, he played concerts in Triest, Rijeka and other cities. In 1829 he finally moved to Vienna, which became the centre of his musical activity until 1837. The city offered a perfect environment for musicians from the provinces of the Danubian Monarchy and also from Italy: a solid infrastructure of music publishers and instrument makers as well as an enthusiastic public in numerous salons and concert halls. The city was a melting pot; guitarists there came diverse backgrounds, including Maruo Giuliani (Italian), Anton Diabelli (Austrian), Wenzel Matiegka (Czech), Jan Nepomucen de Bobrowicz (Polish), and J. K. Mertz (Slovak). Many of Padovec’s compositions were printed in Vienna, mainly by Diabelli & Comp., but also by Pennauer, Werner and others. His guitar was built by Friedrich Schenk, a pupil of Johann Georg Stauffer; it is now preserved at the Hrvatski glazbeni zavod (Croation Music Institute) in Zagreb.

During his Viennese period Padovec made concert tours in several European countries, until he was forced to retreat due to poor eyesight, which dated back to his childhood but was worsening badly. In 1837 he returned to his hometown Varaždin. There he continued to play concerts until becoming blind in 1848; he gradually shifted his musical activities from performing to composing and teaching. Several months before his death Padovec returned to the stage. On 2 April 1873, in a concert at the Redouten-Saal of Varaždin, he played his Grand Fantasia on Croatian songs and Italian operatic motifs for ten-string guitar and contributed some vocal compositions and chamber music. The programme of the concert and the biographies of the performing musicians indicate that the musical life in a provincial Croatian town was still characterized by the cultural milieu of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The catalogue of Padovec’s works contains more than two hundred compositions, mostly for solo guitar, songs with guitar accompaniment and guitar duos, but also vocal music and chamber music without guitar. He wrote at least five concertos for guitar and strings or orchestra, two of them (the first and second concertinos) have been located and are available in a new edition (DGA-Editions). Also available in print are a collection of solo guitar works (Mel Bay) and a collection of songs (Editions Chanterelle), which is the source of the present recording. Songs with guitar accompaniment were very popular in nineteenth century; guitarists like Giuliani, Diabelli and Fernando Sor wrote for the genre, as did Carl Maria von Weber and Johann Baptist Gänsbacher. Many of Franz Schubert’s songs had been arranged for guitar by his contemporaries, and some of them published already during the composer’s lifetime. Padovec wrote songs in German (in the vein of Romantic lieder) as well as in Croatian language – a tribute to a burgeoning sense national culture. The performers on this recording decided to select only eight Croatian songs, including some world premiere recordings; they are beautiful intimate and lyrical miniatures.

Padovec’s compositions are characterized by charming melodies and harmonic order, creating a new synthesis of Viennese, Italian and other national elements. The guitar is used in a distinguished way – idiomatic and brilliant, but not superficially virtuosic. In its elaborated song accompaniments the guitar has some beautiful introductions and interludes and supports the voice, sometimes in dialogue, with elegant melodic figurations.

Stanley Alexandrowicz also plays two of Padovec’s variation sets on Schubert’s Trauerwalzer, D. 365, no. 2. The first set – Variations op. 4 (in A major) – were published in 1832 by Cappi & Diabelli. The later version originates within Padovec’s guitar method (published in 1842 by Werner), which has a special section for the ten-string guitar. Both are written in the tradition of typical nineteenth-century variation settings, displaying different virtuosic techniques and figurations such as arpeggios, slurs and scales.

Following the fashion of the 1840s, created by Luigi Legnani, Giulio Regondi and J. K. Mertz, Padovec played a guitar with an augmented bass. His ten-string guitar was equipped with a pedal mechanism to change the tuning of the open bass strings. Stanley Alexandrowicz uses a ten-string guitar by Gary Southwell based on a model of Johann Gottfried Scherzer, another pupil of Stauffer. But the sound is – due to the strings, playing technique or recording settings? – rather different from period instruments. The advantages offered by additional strings are limited by the necessity to control their resonance. In the present recording the harmony is sometimes disturbed by such resonance. Generally, the sound quality, especially in the treble register, is one of the performance’s main defects, but the balance between voice and guitar is good. Sometimes the flexibility of the tempo, which may be appropriate in the accompaniments, causes some rhythmic instability in the solo parts.

Dominika Zamara has a colourful soprano voice and a good sense for Padovec’s mixture of Slavic timbre and Italianate bel canto.

The booklet of this new CD provides a wealth of well-researched information about the composer and his music. Given the paucity of recordings of Padovec’s music, the present recording is a valuable contribution to the documentation and the revival of nineteenth-century guitar music.