Ilijas by Nebojsa Zivovic

ILIJAS (1996) is a rhapsodic composition, titled after a small town in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia. It has a clear associations with folk tunes of that picturesque Balkan area, as well as mixed rhythms and tonal scales whose roots could be found even further East. In the introduction of the piece, Zivkovic calls for a very unusual marimba technique that produces sounds that remind us of a Franz Liszt grand piano sound.The middle part, however, uses typical marimbistic patterns, masterly composed in a number of various odd meters with melody in the octaves played by the right hand.The varied repetition of the opening part leads for a moment in a major keys, but after that short “light of hope” the music goes back to the melancholic mood and ends tranquillo, morendo…