Long serving artistic director of the Slovenian Philharmonic, Ivo Petric, graduated from the Ljubljana Academy of Music in composition (L.M. Skerjanc) and conducting (D. Svara). As well as composing, he was also intensively involved in the realisation of music, and for some years led the Slavko Osterc Ensemble, certainly one of the most important, if not the most important, chamber orchestras in the area of new music in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, Petric was for thirty years the editor of the Edition of the Slovene Composers' Society, and thus made an enormous contribution to ensuring that the works of Slovene composers saw the light of day both domestically and outside Slovenia. Until 1980, he was also the secretary of the Slovene Composers' Society. In the composer's words, the act of composing is only important to him if the work does more than just sit in a drawer, as it is not written for posterity but for today. His music is sonic art that the listener must follow exclusively aurally. If one wanted to seek out Petric's models, one would perhaps arrive at Hindemith, Bartók and Shostakovich, while amongst Slovene composers Slavko Osterc undoubtedly exerted a certain influence on him.
About his Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra, the composer wrote the following: “I composed this concerto for our own excellent trumpeter, Stanko Arnold. After a series of concertante works for various solo instruments: piano, violin, viola, violin and cello, flute, oboe, clarinet and trumpet (this was an occasional work, entitled Burlesque pour les temps passés) I decided to also write a concerto for trumpet that would serve concertante and virtuoso purposes. The work came about in the winter of 1985 and the spring of 1986. Formally, it is a single movement work, although it is constructed from three contrasting thematic ideas, which, after a few bars of introduction, are presented one after the other, thus forming a kind of prelude. There follow three independent movements, more extensively developing each musical idea in turn. In the introduction a short fanfare motive also appears. This is my fanfare for the introduction to a Slovenian Philharmonic subscription concert, and it is heard again in the coda, concluding the composition along with the other themes.”