ANTONIO JANIGRO (1918-1989), cellist, conductor and teacher, was one of the greatest
European musicians of our time. He studied at the Milan Conservatory and École Normale de
Musique in Paris. While still a student, he embarked on a soloist career that was take him to
many of the world`s centers of music; he performed with prominent orchestras and renowed
conductors. In 1939 he came to Zagreb where he taught for a number of years at the Music
School Beethoven, Zagreb Music Academy, conducted the Croatian Radio Television Chamber
Orchestra and founded the Zagreb Soloists. After almost thirty years in Croatia, he moved to
Milan where he was conductor of Angelicum Ensemble. This was followed by appointments in
Saarbrücken where he conducted the Chamber Radio Orchestra and in Düsseldorf where he
taught at the Robert Schumann Conservatory for several years. In Salzburg he was conductor of
the Camerata Accademica ensemble and taught masterclasses at the Mozarteum. He spent some
time in Portugal, Great Britain and Canada. Near the end of his life he was active in the Romano
Romani Foundation in Brescia.
Antonio Janigro deserves great words, he deserves even he paraphrase of Kennedy`s famous
words of Churchill: „ Never was so much owed by so many to one man.“ And truly, Croatian
people owe a great deal to this Italian musician. He came to Zagreb at very beginning of the
World War II. He brought his 21 years of age and two degrees: on from the Milan Conservatory,
and one from Casals and Alexanian`s École Normale de Musique in Paris, but he also came with
several concert cruises around the world behind him. He needed a peaceful, neutral harbour
from which he could set off as soon as the world in war renewed its interests in music. As it
usually happens, temporary solutions turn out to be the long lasting ones: Janigro stayed in
Zagreb for 30 years. The remaining 20 years he spent in the music centers of Europe (Salzburg,
Stuttgart, etc)… In Zagreb, Janigro had no rivals, only partners in making music, and above all in
learning. He did not find it underneath him to take lessons with professor Huml, because he felt
that the methods used by the founder of Zagreb`s school of cello could improve his own
technique of handling the bow. Since Zagreb could not boast with a prominent cellist prior to his
arrival, he taught the beginner students, but also decided to become a beginner student himself-
a student of conducting. If there is anything worth the Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy, and if
we agree that Rostropovich, for example, belongs to the Dionysian type (because of the extreme
dramatics of his musical interpretations, passionate engagment in social events, Faustian
anxieties in spiritual actuality), then Janigro is the archetype of Apollonian. To those who heard
him play live, only one of his records will suffice to realize it. But Janigro belonged to the
Apollonian tribe as a citizen as well, and as an intellectual, a pedagogue, a European, and a
business man; he was characterized by clarity, sobriety, clear mindedness, lucidity. Few people
in the post-war Europe were able to foresee with such precision what was going to happen to
the trends of music and to the concert market: that the baroque masters would become
fashionable and the innumerable small, but
perfectly precise chamber ensembles would arise
and develop new culture of both performance and listening. Since he knew the Croatian music
mentally better than anyone before him, he immediately recognized the incredible opportunity
given to the excellent string players, who (either due to the narrowness of social surroundings
or to the spiritual narrowness of Huml`s old school) could not rise to the solo status, but rather
sank into the anonymity of orchestral ensembles. A way out for all those talents was in a
paradoxical dialectic leap: a soloist ensemble. Virtuosi di Zagabria…
(ZVONIMIR BERKOVIĆ, Belgrade, 1928- Zagreb, 2009; publicist, music and film critic,
film director, screenplay writer, university professor)