11:00
11:00 Town Square
Concert: Classical music at 11
Belgrade Faculty of Music’s Students
The Faculty of Music Art of the University of Arts in Belgrade celebrates 78 years of its activity as the oldest school of higher music education in Serbia in 2015. It built the foundations of the overall development of professional musicians and particularly of the overall system of music education. With 822 students and almost 200 teachers, it is the largest school of this type in the region and its study programs cover all the specific features of music.
The Faculty of Music has twelve departments: Composition, Conducting, Solo Singing, Piano, String instruments (violin, viola, cello, double bass), Wind instruments (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba), Musicology, Music pedagogy, Music Theory, Ethnomusicology, Chamber Music and Jazz. There are twenty-six study programs at under-graduate, master and doctoral level in the field of arts and science. Among the teachers are the most prominent Serbian artists – composers Zoran Erić and Isidora Žebeljan, conductor Bojan Sudjić, baritone Nikola Mijajilovic, soprano Aneta Ilić, pianist Aleksandar Serdar, violinist Maja Jokanović, violist Dejan Mladjenović, cellist Sandra Belić, bassist Nebojša Ignjatović, flutist Ljubiša Jovanović, trumpeter Mladen Djordjević, harpist Ljiljana Nestorovska and many others. Their best students will present themselves in the newly established program of The Days of Mokranjac – Classical music at 11 A.M. joining the European practice of holding concerts in the open air.
12:00
12:00 Birth house of Mokranjac
Presentation: The Birth House of Stevan St. Mokranjac, monograph
Publisher: Krajina Museum, Negotin
On the occasion of 100 years since the death of the great Serbian composer, the Museum of Krajina in 2014, in cooperation with the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and with the help of the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, started to work on the preparation of Mokranjac’s birth house monographs. Work on the preparation of monographs was based on a survey of architecture of the birth house of Stevan Mokranjac and all objects and works of art. The study included preparation of a detailed catalog, as well as its publication. Architecture of Mokranjac’s house and collection were presented in separate chapters: The history of the house of Stevan Mokranjac with emphasis on local HISTORICAL context; Architecture of Mokranjac’s house; The interior design and interior of Mokrnjac’s home; Memorabilia and composer’s awards; The collection of paintings in the house of Stevan Mokranjac; The ethnological collection collected in the house of Stevan Mokranjac; A collection of music tracks and records in the home of Stevan Mokranjac, Mokranjac’s library. In these chapters the synthetic texts are written about each of these collections, as well as a complete and detailed catalogue of the collection. Every item in the house is shown by a photographic illustration. The monograph also includes an English translation. The monograph is designed for experts and scientific circles, then students and school children as a form of educational resources and ultimately the general public and tourists as a form of presentation of this important complex.
The monograph will contribute to better attendance and better reception of the birth house of Mokranjac, as well as higher tourist visits and its better maintenance.
20:00
20:00 Cultural Centre
Concert: RTS Symphony Orchestra and Choir
Conductor: Bojan Sudjic
Program: Beethoven – Symphony No 9
The ensembles of the Musical Production of the Radio-television of Serbia – its Symphonic Orchestra (1937) and Choir (1938) – have been active for over 70 years and constitute a pillar of the musical activities of radio and television in Serbia. Also, they have well-developed concert activities and their carefully conceived and engaged work, performances in Belgrade, throughout Serbia, and abroad have contributed to the quality of musical life, cherishing Serbian musical heritage in particular. Alongside major established visiting conductors, the ensembles have been led, in the capacity of chief conductor, by some of the most prominent artists in music: Mihajlo Vukdragović, Milan Bajšanski, Stevan Hristić, Krešimir Baranović, Borivoje Simić, Mladen Jagušt, Vančo Čavdarski, Vladimir Kranjčević, Milen Načev, and David Porcelijn. Since 2005, Bojan Suđić has been the artistic director and chief conductor of both ensembles, who began his career precisely by working with the Choir and Symphonic Orchestra of the RTS, in 1985 and 1989, respectively. The ensembles have performed at every major festival in Yugoslavia and Serbia, and toured, with much success, England, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, Russia, Romania, Morocco, Montenegro, and Croatia.
In addition to producing archive recordings of their concert performances, whose programmes are usually conceived with that purpose in mind, the orchestra has produced a large number of studio recordings, most of which feature works by domestic authors (Yugoslav and Serbian) and pieces of contemporary music with domestic soloists. Over the years, the programming objectives of their work have not significantly changed: quality (usually première) performances and recordings of domestic music (both historical and contemporary), première performances of those works from the international musical canon that are underrepresented on the Serbian concert stage, especially monumental vocal-instrumental, symphonic, and a cappella works. This trajectory of achieving the highest professional standards in performance and the realisation of inspired original creations has incorporated projects realised over the past ten years under the artistic leadership of maestro Bojan Suđić. In addition to establishing concert seasons and frequent performances of capital works from the musical heritage of the world, the ensembles have retained their focus on interpreting and recording works by Serbian composers, such as Vasilije Mokranjac, Ljubica Marić, Konstantin Babić, Vladan Radovanović, Rajko Maksimović, Dejan Despić, Vlastimir Trajković, Milan Mihajlović, Ivan Jevtić, Zoran Erić, Jugoslav Bošnjak, Rastislav Kambasković, Vera Milanković, Svetislav Božić, Isidora Žebeljan, Ivan Brkljačić, Aleksandar Simić, Aleksandar Sedlar, Zoran Mulić, and many others, as well as Serbian music classics, such as Kornelije Stanković, Stevan Mokranjac, to whom the ensembles paid special attention on the occasion of the centenary of his death in 2014, Petar Konjović, Stevan Hristić, Marko Tajčević, and others.
A leading name in Serbian conducting, Bojan Suđić is a chief conductor of the RTS Symphonic Orchestra and Choir and executive and artistic director of the Musical Production of the RTS. He is also employed as a full professor and the head of the conducting department at the Faculty of Music Art in Belgrade. In 2015, maestro Suđić celebrates 30 years of his professional career in conducting. Since the very beginning, his work and repertoire have featured an extraordinary breadth and diversity of choral, symphonic, and stage music, remarkable achievements in all of these domains, and numerous awards – ranging from First Prize at the 1989 Yugoslav Young Artists’ Competition in Zagreb to significant professional awards on the domestic music scene: the prize of the International Composers’ Forum, the annual prize of the Association of Musical Artists, The City of Belgrade Prize, the Golden Armlet,, the annual prize of the Musica classica journal, and others. He performs regularly in Serbia and abroad. Since 1992, he has been a permanent conductor with the RTS Choir and Symphonic Orchestra. Since 1989, he has been engaged in intense collaboration with the Belgrade Philharmonic. In 1993, he turned to conducting in opera, becoming a leading conductor at the National Theatre Opera in Belgrade, and its chief conductor during the season of 1999/2000. He was general music director of the Opera during the season of 2004/2005. In 1998, he was engaged as a visiting conductor at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, becoming a conductor in residence there in 2000. With their ensemble, he realised over 150 opera and ballet productions. He has also pursued a fruitful collaboration with the ensemble of the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki. As a visiting conductor, he has performed with over 40 orchestras in the region and abroad, such as the Helsinki Philharmonic, Novosibirsk Philharmonic, Turku Philharmonic, and UNAM Philharmonic.
21:30 The Closing Ceremony of the Festival
21:30 Cultural Centre
The Closing Ceremony of the Festival
Presentation of The 50th Days of Mokranjac awards
Closing speech: Branka Radovic, PhD, selector
Closing of the Festival: Jovan Milovanovic, Negotin Municipality President