Revolution in Zagreb

Politically and economically, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito likes to preserve his neutrality by playing East against West. But culturally, Yugoslavia has made her choice clear: freedom. The bold, abstract expressionism of Yugoslav painters has put them in the van of the avantgarde. Last week, during a week-long festival of international contemporary music in Zagreb, Yugoslav composers proved that they were as ready to accept far-out modernism as were their comrades at the easel. Sell-out audiences loudly approved.

The program made a pass at traditional music (an opera by Prokofiev, piano works by Debussy and Ravel), but the score card was overwhelmingly modern: a sampling of contemporary Italian music played by the Milan Radio Orchestra, a concert of atonal chamber works by France's Parrenin Quartet, an opera by Germany's Werner Egk. The tone of the festival reflected Tito's promise of a free hand, but Chief Organizer Milko Keleman, 37, an instructor in composition at Zagreb Conservatory, was understandably anxious when Cultural Relations Commissar Drago Vucinic showed up for a concert of electronic works played by the Cologne Ensemble for New Music.

Joining the ensemble, U.S. Pianist David Tudor clomped the keyboard for Transicion II while a colleague plucked the strings of the open-topped grand piano, occasionally walloping them with a variety of drumsticks. Offstage, Argentine Composer Mauricio Kagel tape-recorded snatches of the performance, played them back while Tudor and friend banged on. After more such pyrotechnics, Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire sounded almost romantic. At concert's end Keleman waited nervously for the commissar's reaction. Schoenberg, said Vucinic, was merely a "hybrid"--a musical petit bourgeois. "I prefer the outright revolutionary techniques," Keleman sighed with relief. Before the festival ended, the surprising official response had started the hottest rumor in the Yugoslav musical world: the Communist Party itself may commission an electronic work to celebrate the opening of the next Yugoslav party congress.

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