Jan Urban (Prague, 1875-1952, Valjevo, Serbia) was a Czech composer who spent most of his life among the South Slav regions, initially in the Kingdom of Serbia, after 1918 in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and from 1929 until its occupation by the Nazis in 1941 in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
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Sonatina for Piano solo (c. 1903)
1. Allegro moderato (0:00)
2. Moderato cantabile (3:38)
3. Rondo: Presto (5:28)
Biljana Urban, piano
info about composer and compositions:
https://donemus.nl/composer/jan-urban/?fbclid=IwAR3ZuS5-g_DLzTcwWzCQ5p9aX1s0W_RhNA-238-TODX1S2y6DtTKqVlUIGk
Sheet music for sale:
https://webshop.donemus.com/action/front/sheetmusic/17770/Song+of+Grass?fbclid=IwAR3ZuS5-g_DLzTcwWzCQ5p9aX1s0W_RhNA-238-TODX1S2y6DtTKqVlUIGk
Details by Biljana Urban:
The great contribution of Urban to Serbian classical music is his contribution to orchestral music. His orchestral output – around 20 overtures, innumerable dances and suites of remarkable orchestration – was the first of its kind to be written for full symphony orchestra.
His highly imaginative orchestration of the folkloristic “Poskočica”, as well as his “Serbian Dances”, contribute to Urban being termed “the Serbian Dvořák”. From the early 1920s up until the 1990s, most of these works have been performed and recorded by the Belgrade Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In Skopje (today’s Macedonia) he founded the first orchestra and became
its Opera’s first conductor around 1919. Urban served as Kapellmeister in the Serbian Army during the First World War. Several of his works commemorate this period: “In Memory of Corfu”, “Crossing Albania”, “La Serbie de l’Orient” (In the East), “The Peonies of Kosovo”, “Sounds of Medvednik mountain”.
“La Serbie de l’Orient” was performed in Bizerta, Tunisia during the war.
In Paris and other French cities this remarkable work was performed under the name of his superior officer, Captain Dragutin Pokorny, so depriving Urban of his well deserved accolade.
The celebrated composition “March on Drina”, written in Valjevo in 1915 and signed by Stanislav Binički, is also believed by his family and the citizens of Valjevo to be Urban’s work. It was later conducted by Herbert von Karajan in the Vienna Philharmonic’s famous New Year’s
Concert of 1987.
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