Arti musices, Vol. 55 No. 1, 2024.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/9xn31cw3vy
Sketches for a Biography of the Pianist and Music Pedagogue Danica Pollak-Ogrizović (1905-1976)
Tatjana Čunko
orcid.org/0009-0002-9544-9072
; Odsjek za povijest hrvatske glazbe HAZU, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
Pianist and music pedagogue Danica Pollak-Ogrizović is one of the many women who have not found their place in the Croatian musical lexicography. There are no entries about her in neither the Music Encyclopedia or the Croatian Encyclopedia, and in the Jewish Biographical Lexicon she is mentioned only as the wife of Milan Pollak (1902-1976). Based on numerous archival sources, this work presents new information about her family, their musical education at the school of the Croatian Music Institute, Danica’s activities in Bjelovar (1928-1941), the life and work of Danica and her husband during the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945) and after the war, until their death in May 1976.
Firstly, the research of Danica’s life and work showed that she grew up in the family of one of the leading modernist Croatian playwrights, Milan Ogrizović (1877-1923) and his wife Ljubica (Ljuba) (1882-1949). Their home was a meeting place for modern Croatian writers, and their children – Ljerka (1903-1969), Danica (1906-1976), Smiljka (1908-1968) and Bogdan (1911-1943) – were exceptionally gifted. Despite the poverty in which they lived almost all their lives, all the children received the best possible education, including a musical education. Their father’s death (1923) interrupted their attendance at the school of the Croatian Music Institute. The eldest, then twenty-year-old Ljerka, stopped studying after finishing the second grade of the high school piano, and the youngest, Bogdan, who was twelve years old at the time, stopped learning the piano after finishing the second grade of an elementary school. However, the family found a way for Smiljka and Danica to continue their education after a one-year hiatus. Smiljka eventually graduated violin in 1940, but had taught since 1932, and Danica completed her education as a pianist in 1931, but had started working as early as 1928. Bogdan, as a very gifted mathematician, already started to give instructions in mathematics as a gymnasium pupil in order to help his family financially. The younger children of Ljuba and Milan chose to work in pedagogy after graduation – Smiljka taught violin in Karlovac and Zagreb, Danica piano in Bjelovar and Zagreb, and Bogdan became a mathematics teacher in Zagreb gymnasiums. Although his father was a representative of the Croatian Party of Rights (1910-1912), Bogdan became a communist in his student days, so during the Second Word War he was a member of the Zagreb City Committee and president of the City People’s Liberation Committee until he was betrayed and hanged by Ustashas in December 1943. Danica’s husband Milan was a member of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) in Bjelovar, in which he remained during the cooperation with the partisans, when he became a member of the Executive Committee of the HSS and a councillor of ZAVNOH.
Secondly, the research also shows that he and Danica did not join the Partisans for ideological reasons. Milan was Jewish, the racial laws were clear, and after his release from the concentration camp (1941), no second miracle should have been expected. They decided to take refuge with the partisans, where they did their work – he as the leader of the law department of the District National Liberation Committee (NOO) of the Bjelovar district, and Danica as the choir director of two mixed choirs of the same NOO, which were an integral part of the local theatre companies, and later as a piano teacher at the partisan high school in Glina. The presentation of Danica and her husband Milan as communists is a consequence of the labelling of all left-wing intellectuals and anti-fascists by the appropriate services of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and then the Independent State of Croatia, and finally, all partisans as communists, which should be subjected to critical scrutiny today, with the archival documentation cited in this article. As an expert member and delegate of the Bjelovar NOO, Danica participated in the First Congress of Cultural Workers of Croatia in Topusko, where, probably at the instigation of ballet dancer Franjo Horvat and with the support of pianist and composer Natko Devčić, the political manager of the Central Theatre Company at ZAVNOH, she prepared a ballet on selected movements from the piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. The choice of music depended on Danica’s musical memory, but it also showed the civil and intellectual upbringing of its performers who did not want – and did not have to – adapt to the audience, which in the case of the First Congress of Cultural Workers of Croatia, was composed of cultural workers. It should be borne in mind that ballets – according to data from Branko Hećimović’s Repertory of Croatian Theatres – were the most performed type in the repertoire of the main Croatian partisan theatre companies, especially the National Liberation Theatre Company with the Main Headquarters of the National Liberation Army. That solo ballet to Beethoven’s music was performed only once (25 June 1944) and, very probably, in memory of Bogdan Ogrizović, whose death particularly affected Danica Pollak-Ogrizović and Devčić, and inspired Horvat, who at the end of his career considered that ballet his first significant choreography, costume design and scenography and the first important solo ballet performance.
And finally, the third part of the research showed that Danica Pollak-Ogrizović, a few years after the war and three concert performances (two with the Symphony Orchestra of Radio Station Zagreb, conducted by Friedrich Zaun and Milan Horvat in 1946 and 1947), and five recordings made for Swiss Radio (1954), retired from public view and continued to do her favourite job – piano pedagogy until 1963. After the war she did not mention the days spent with the partisans, except in the case when she asked for that time to be recognized as her work experience in the profession, which was acknowledged to her.
Research into the life and work of a forgotten pianist and music pedagogue turned during the research into a narrative about an important Croatian family through three generations and four state-political systems, full of various contextualisations, but above all into a narrative about people carried by various historical whirlwinds to which they adapted, more or less successfully; into a story about miracles that happened unexpectedly, seemingly without cause or reason, which tried to be illuminated, again, with the numerous archival sources and some witnesses. But above all, it is the story of a woman, pianist, pedagogue, idealist, pragmatist, devoted wife... Told perhaps too late, without the first-hand testimony of her peers, friends and colleagues, important participants in Croatian musical life. Her niece, the famous Croatian choreographer Ljubica Wagner (b. 1934), with very vivid memories, was a grateful witness not only in terms of the life, work and personality of her aunt Danica Ogrizović and uncle Milan Pollak, because she herself actively participated in the cultural life of Croatia. Her memories are woven into the text as a supplement and contextualization of archival research.
Keywords
Danica Pollak-Ogrizović; pianist; Topusko; ballet; Bjelovar Music School; Zagreb City Music School; State Music School Zagreb; Milan Pollak
Hrčak ID:
319641
URI
Publication date:
22.7.2024.
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