CD Review: Hänssler Classic’s ‘Blagoje Bersa: Lieder/Songs’
Unknown, perhaps, to a vast majority of concertgoers, Blagoje Bersa (1873-1934) ranks as a seminal figure in Croatian national musicography. His compositions, including orchestral music, opera, songs, exude all the frenzied sophistication of fin-de-siècle eclecticism that Marija Kuntaric, in her monograph on Bersa, derives “from the cantabile Italian melody, then the various masters of German Romanticism (Wagner, Mahler, R. Strauss) {…}