Ivan Palovič, sr.

After graduating from the Academy of Performing Arts, Ivan Palovič engaged in richly varied activity as a performer, which comprises the fundamental part of his creative legacy. Apart from piano recitals, he often performed as a soloist with Slovak and Czech orchestras. In the field of chamber music he collaborated with several Slovak performers and also with the well-known Russian violinist Boris Pergamenschtschikow.

Palovič as a performer was associated by critics with an energetic temperament, sense of style, fine rhythm, technical resources, brilliant play of octaves and chords, considerable gradational abilities etc. By his make-up as a performer he was drawn more to the works of the romantics, and particularly to 20th century works (Rachmaninov, Skriabin, Prokofiev, Bartók etc.).

In his rich concert repertoire Palovič had a sincere and special attachment to performing original works by Slovak composers. He was one of the first Slovak performers of the piano work of the Bratislava native Johann Nepomuk Hummel, and he evoked unusual interest and recognition by his performance of Jána Cikkera’s Concertina, and still more so by his project of producing the entire work to that point of Dušan Martinček, which he introduced to concert life (i.e. work produced up to the beginning of the 1990s). Apart from Martinček’s works, he also successfully premiered a series of other Slovak composers (Juraj Hatrík, Vladimír Bokes, Jozef Malovec etc.).

He completed a great many recordings for Slovak Radio and Television and for recording companies.

During his 27 years in the Academy of Performing Arts he educated many graduates who have successfully taken their places in Slovak concert life and music education.

(Pergler, František: Ivan Palovič (1938 – 1993): Chapters from the History of Piano Art and Teaching in Slovakia. In: Hudobný život 2006/6, p. 26–28.)