Fanfare Ensemble of the Bratislava Conservatory

The Fanfare Ensemble was founded in 1964 at the State Conservatory in Bratislava to revive the city old town-trumpeter tradition. The impulse came from Štefan Hajdin of the municipal education and culture committee; the conservatory and the Municipal House of Culture joined the initiative, and the conservatory director Zdenko Nováček assembled the repertoire. The first ensemble had twelve students and was led by the trumpet professor Jozef Šnóbl, who asked for the post himself.

The ensemble played tower concerts from the Old Town Hall and St Michael Tower. In 1965 it had fourteen members – six trumpets, four horns, three trombones and timpani – and eleven in 1966. The programmes consisted exclusively of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music: intradas, coronation intradas and fanfares. Július Kowalski (Evening Suite) and Jaroslav Meier (Baroque Music) dedicated works to the ensemble.

From 1968 the tower concert became part of the Bratislava Music Festival; the concert of 2 May 1968 at 4 p.m. opened the festival day. In 1969 the trombone professor Jaroslav Beneš took over from Jozef Šnóbl, and under his direction the ensemble opened the 1969 and 1970 festivals. By 1973 some forty to fifty students of the school had passed through it.

Source: Andrej Prachár: Trubačská hudba v Bratislave a obnovenie jej tradície od roku 1964. JAMUSICA, 2023, pp. 27–40.