SIMPHONY ORCHESTRA OF THE FACULTY OF MUSIC IN BELGRADE
Bojan Suđić, conductor

Soloist: DRAGAN SREDOJEVIĆ, violin

Programme:

S. Hristić: Fragment from The Legend Of  Ohrid
P. I. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35
D. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47

Maestro Bojan Suđić, the most distinguished contemporary Serbian conductor, has been the music director of the Music Production Department of Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) for more than a decade and the chief conductor of its two renowned ensembles the RTS Symphony Orchestra and the RTS Choir. As a professor of conducting at the Faculty of Music of the Belgrade University of Arts, he is also the chief conductor of the symphony orchestra of this institution. His artistic and professional career is built on a complex and rich repertoire consisting of symphonic, choral, opera and ballet music. He is also celebrated for directing and conducting large-scale concerts with more than five hundred performers, such as Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the Berlioz and Verdi Requiems, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff, among others, and for performing concerts in front of large audiences (sometimes exceeding ten thousand people) with the intention of introducing and presenting classical music to broader audiences. Maestro Suđić has collaborated with many of the most prominent international artists such as Maxim Vengerov, Vadim Repin, Nigel Kennedy, Ivo Pogorelić, Denis Matsuev, Nikolai Lugansky, Michel Béroff, Shlomo Mintz, Emmanuel Pahud, Plácido Domingo, Željko Lučić, Nemanja Radulović and many others.

Established in the 1950s, the Faculty of Music Symphony Orchestra is the oldest university symphonic ensemble in Serbia and one of the most prominent and active in the region. Throughout its long history, the Symphony Orchestra has provided its members, comprised of students and distinguished Faculty of Music teaching staff, with the opportunity to expand their musical talents, while at the same time presenting outstanding music programmes. Its regular concert performances in all the major venues in Serbia, along with appearances at the most important music festivals, include works from the standard repertoire, with an emphasis on classical, romantic and late-romantic/early-modern symphonic pieces, as well as challenging contemporary music. Led in the past by renowned Serbian conductors such as Dušan Skovran, Darinka Matić-Marović, Stanko Šepić, the Faculty of Music Symphony Orchestra currently performs under the baton of Bojan Suđić.

Dragan Sredojević is one of the most important Serbian violinists of his generation and is in demand as a performer all over the world. Having graduated from the famous Tchaikovsky State Conservatory in Moscow, where he was a student of Marina Yashvili and Edward Grach, he was invited by maestro Valery Gergiev to join one of the world’s most prestigious orchestras, the Mariinsky Orchestra in St Petersburg, where he currently serves as a soloist, performing regularly across the globe. At the age of just twenty-five, alongside his concert engagements at the Mariinsky Theatre, he became the youngest ever leader of the famous London Symphony Orchestra, performing on tours throughout Europe and recording concerts for BBC Radio. The leading talent of his generation, he began playing the violin at the age of six and made his first solo appearance with a symphony orchestra at seven, with the performance of the Concertino for violin and piano by Petar Nikolić. He has won several national and international competitions and is the holder of a Belgrade Angel award for artistic excellence from the Serbian Ministry of Culture. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Music of the University of Belgrade, where he also pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Marija Jokanović. He plays a rare violin by François Lupot, kindly lent to him by a private collector.