Alpski kvintet

Alpski kvintet is a Slovenian folk ensemble in the narodnozabavna tradition, founded in Kranj in 1966 and still playing today. In the German-speaking countries the band is known as Alpenoberkrainer, and over its long career it has sold more than a million records.

The founding members were Jože Antonič (the founder, on guitar), Jože Šmid (clarinet, the leader of the quintet), Ivan Prešern (trumpet), Niko Kraigher (accordion) and Peter Kejžar (baritone). Soon after their first concert in Kranj in 1966 they received their first offer from abroad, from Alsace in France. That trip made them popular not only at home but also in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, and a year after they started they released their first EP, with four songs.

Over the decades the line-up changed many times. Prešern played the trumpet for the first thirty years, Jože Burnik was the accordionist from 1973 to 1983, when Edi Semeja took over, and Janez Per has played the baritone since 1970; in 2003 he also took over the leadership when Antonič handed the guitar to Marjan Rolc. Among the singers, Ivanka Kraševec and Oto Pestner, who joined in 1985, left a special mark before both stepped back in 1996. Pestner returned as an extra member in 2015, and since 2018 the female voice has been Maja Šturm Razboršek. Between 1984 and 1986 the humorist Vinko Šimek worked with them too and recorded the album Ko pride poštar.

The band developed its own way of playing, the so-called Alpine style. It also started the Alpski večer (Alpine Evening) on Bled, held every year since 1987, an idea born at its 20th anniversary in Gorje in 1986, and in 1991 the event won Television Slovenia's Turistični nagelj award. Alpski kvintet was a welcome guest on the big Western European broadcasters, among them ORF, ZDF, ARD, RAI and RTL.

For its 40th anniversary in 2006 the band recorded forty songs, twenty new and twenty old, released on two CDs for the German- and Slovenian-speaking markets. In 2007 it became the first ensemble in Europe to receive the Oberkrainer Award, and in 2011, at its 45th anniversary, the label VM - MCP honoured it in Villach for a million records sold in the German-speaking area. With that label, its partner since 1979 after earlier years with TELDEC, it has five gold records and one diamond record, and at home it won two gold records.

Its Slovenian releases include Slavni ribič (1975), Mi smo pa z Gorenjske (1980), Ljubim te Slovenija (1985), Naša 4 desetletja (2006) and Alpskih 50 let (2016). Lyrics were written by, among others, Svetlana Makarovič, Neža Maurer and Ivan Sivec, and the band's best-known songs are "Čas počitnic", "Dobro jutro", "Janezov bariton", "Kranjsko dekle" and "Mladi lovec".