Nina Šenk inscribes her works on a broad musical field: a field of the calm and the virtuosic, the abstract and the poetic, the known and the unknown, the new and the historical. She trusts tradition, principles of symmetry, of balance, and yet often conceals this with a bravura contemporary écriture. She writes out her scores with great precision, but she knows where the music can benefit from more spontaneity and is open to the possibility of improvisation. Of importance to her is virtuosity, agility, yet in her works she increasingly delves into a tranquil sonic state. She respects genres and their rules, but she often bends them and, where necessary, ignores them altogether. If we stroll through three genre orientations – chamber, ensemble and concertante music – we can thus constantly encounter the transferal of one to another: symphonic colouring can be found even in duos, while a chamber ensemble can surprise us within an ambitious solo concerto.
Primož Trdan