Jozef Podprocký

"Podprocký’s work takes its departure mainly from domestic inspirations. This is manifested on the one hand by his appropriating the traditions of the Slovak composition school, and on the other by his attempt to introduce a new creative approach to folklore material. Later on he subjected these premises to transformation, via Bartokian technologies and the rational principles of the Second Vienna School. His ideal is a compositionally homogeneous musical work whose processual quality associates it with traditional models, but whose musical language grows from the achievements of the interwar music avantgarde. Seen from this standpoint, Podprocký’s art reaches its peak in his series of string quartets, which betrays the inspiration of Bartok’s quartet idiom. While in  Podprocký’s concerto literature what dominates is the link to the classical models, in his orchestral work he tends rather to take imaginative flights towards romantic ideals. A certain local patriotism emerges as a far from negligible, indeed ever more manifest line in his creative production. His attachment to East Slovakian folklore sources and Slovak music traditions becomes evident in Podprocký’s adaptations of folk music and reconstructions of East Slovakian historical music, and indeed it gradually becomes a permanent component of his musical language."

(GODÁR, Vladimír: Jozef Podprocký. In: A Hundred Slovak Composers. Eds. Marián Jurík, Peter Zagar. Bratislava : National Music Centre Slovakia, 1998, p. 228.)