News and events

The story of an abandoned piano from Studio 01 of Radio Slovenia

17. 6. 2022

The presentation of the abandoned and in 2022 renovated concert piano Bösendorfer happened on May 31st 2022 in Studio 26 of Radio Slovenia in Ljubljana. The live broadcast took place on the ARS program. The co-creators of the event were: director and screenwriter Klemen Markovčič, pianist Klemen Golner, playwright Željko Hrs and hosts Eva Longyka Marušič and Igor Velše.

In 2020 the musicologist and music editor Tina Ogrin, responsible for the management of the Third Program of Radio Slovenia – Ars, and people of the management of Radio Slovenia, decided to renovate the Bösendorfer concert piano, which was kept in from Studio 01 and thus provide it with better quality and wider useful value. So by 2022, the piano is no longer considered as an object, but as a subject with its own history and story.

The Bösendorfer piano was brought from the Hribar family’s apartment in Ljubljana to Radio Slovenia in 1947. Various, even malicious, stories are spread about the takeover from the Hribar family’s house, related to the name of Bojan Adamič, who was at the time employed by Radio Slovenia. It is very possible that he came for the piano at the request of the Radio. He offered the Hribar family a very low redemption amount of money, which he probably did not give out of his own pocket, but was determined and given to him on the Radio. If all this is true, then the meaning of the amount, which was low and is the subject of contempt, also has a completely different connotation. It was therefore not determined by Bojan Adamič. Considering that hundreds of pianos were confiscated at that time, maybe he was the one who managed to get something from the Radio …

The following description of the research about the origin of the piano is a summary of ARS program web article Zgodba nekega zapuščenega klavirja.

The story of the restoration began in 2011, when the composer Gregor Strniša was invited to create music for a radio play. In the corner of the studio 01 of Radio Slovenia, he saw an abandoned and lonely concert piano and decided to create music on it.

The collaboration with the play ended prematurely, but Strniša was left with the already created music and with the idea to explore the history of this concert piano. This later led him to the archives of the Bösendorfer piano factory in Vienna, where he came across information in archival books that the first owner of the piano was Rado Hribar. After this discovery, he got in touch with his nephew Peter Hribar Jr., to whom he revealed the background of the piano as the central informant in this research.

The Bösendorfer piano

The Bösendorfer piano

Mirko Štular (Photo: RTV Slovenija)
Urednica Programa Ars Ingrid Kovač Brus

Program Ars editor Ingrid Kovač Brus (Photo: RTV Slovenija)
Ivan Hribar ml., nečak Rada Hribarja

Ivan Hribar Jr., Rado Hribar’s nephew (Photo: RTV Slovenija)

Group photo (Photo: RTV Slovenija)
Alenka Adamič in klavir Bösendorfer

Alenka Adamič with the Bösendorfer piano