HDS - Croatian Composers Society

Membership in Artistic and Scholarly Organizations or Institutions: Croatian Composers' Society
Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences (associate Member from 1988, regular member from 1992, from 2004, vice-president)

Awards and Merits: 1965 - The City of Zagreb Award
1978 - award given by the Council of Central Florida for Arts and Sciences
1980 - Milka Trnina Award
1989 - Vjesnik's Josip Štolcer Slavenski Prize
1992 - Vladimir Nazor Award
1993 - Orlando Award
1994 -
1996 - the Order of Danica hrvatska with the image of Marko Maruliæ given by the president of the Republic of Croatia
1997 - Porin Award
1999 - Ivan Lukaèiæ Award
2002 - Porin Award
2003 -
2004 -
2005 -
2005 -
2005 -
2005 -

About the Author

As a composer, Dešpalj has created valuable works which display great inventiveness and the superb knowledge of forms and orchestration. His works have been performed and released in the country and abroad. 'My compositions can be placed somewhere between neoclassicism and neo-Romanticism. That is a point between the Paris Group of Six, Shostakovich and Prokofiev with an occasional touch of Bartók and Stravinsky's music, but not beyond'. (Pavle Dešpalj) His repertoire contains a wide range of various styles and he particularly nurtures the Croatian music as the most consistent and best-informed promoter of Stjepan Šulek's opus. He records intensively for radio, television and various record companies in Croatia and abroad.