WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9th at 8.00 PM
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL
RTS CHOIR
CONDUCTOR BOJAN SUĐIĆ
Alfred Schnittke
Choir Concerto for mixed choir
O Master Of All Living Things
I, An Expert In Human Passions
God, Grant Deliverance From Sin
Complete This Work Which I Began
The Radio Television of Serbia Choir was founded in 1939. within the Radio Belgrade. The first chief conductor, Milan Bajsanski, directed his strategy towards the affirmation of the domestic musical heritage, as well as significant achievements of world choral literature and vocal-instrumental works. This strategy was retained up this day, defining the eight decade long artistic biography of this ensemble. The work of the Choir was especially marked by the chief conductors Borivoje Simic, Mladen Jagust, Vladimir Krnjavcevic and Bojan Sudjic, with whom the artistic collaboration is now lasting for more than two decades.
Throughout history the Choir has performed with many prominent conductors and soloists. It participated in all the important festivals in ex-Yugoslavia and Serbia, and it had successful tours in many countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, England, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia. The Choir is also continuously active in the field of archiving permanent sound recordings, which are being kept in the Sound Archive of Radio Belgrade. Among the archives, the music of domestic artists especially stands out, which makes this ensemble actively work towards the preservation and affirmation of the national cultural heritage.
The RTS Choir has won many awards including the October Award of the city of Belgrade (1982), Zlatni beocug (1989) for the promotion of culture and arts of the city of Belgrade, Zlatni beocug (2007) for lasting contribution to culture of the capital, Music of the Classics for the concert of the year (2014), and Sretenjski orden of third order for the results achieved in cultural activities in the past 80 years of work.
It is the only professional ensemble of this type in Serbia. Its repertoire today includes the most significant choral pieces, complex vocal-instrumental and opera pieces, and it also nurtures the music of popular genres. This ensemble also actively performs pieces of contemporary domestic and foreign composers, the repertoire continues to expand through the collaborations with other ensembles of Music production, enriching the already rich collection of the Sound Archive with new recordings. The wide range of artistic aspirations, positioned the RTS Choir as a renowned ensemble, with a recognizable sound and performing reputation
Leading name among Serbian music conductors, Bojan Suđić is a chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra and Choir of Radio Television of Serbia. He is also a full professor of conducting at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade.
From the very beginning, his work was distinguished by the exceptional breadth and diversity of the choral, symphonic and incidental music repertoires, outstanding achievements in all these areas and numerous awards – starting from the First Prize at the Yugoslav contest of young artists in Zagreb in 1989, through the most significant professional recognitions in domestic music: awards at the International Review of Composers, annual awards of the Association of the Music Artists, City of Belgrade awards, Golden Link awards, the magazine Muzika Klasika annual awards, Vuk awards and others. He intensively performs on domestic and foreign scenes.
Since 1992, he has been a permanent conductor of the RTS Symphony Orchestra and Choir, with whom he performed a great number of choral, symphonic and vocal symphonic achievements of world and domestic heritage, of which many were premiere performances. Most of these concerts were recorded for radio and TV, and they are the foundation of extensive Sudjić’s discography.
He has worked with Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra since 1989, and with this ensemble, as a permanent guest conductor, was on tour in China, performed at BEMUS and conducted numerous concerts featuring, among others, Nigel Kennedy and Maxim Vengerov. The crown of this collaboration represents the CD with the works of Sergei Rachmaninoff.
In 1993, he dedicated himself to opera conducting, leading the ensemble of the National Theatre Opera in Belgrade, and performing as its conductor in 1999/2000 season. Bojan Suđić was General Music Director of the Opera was in 2004/2005. He recorded many performances of the standard ballet and opera repertoire in his rich biography, while among the guest appearances, the performance at the Athens Festival in 1998 (Carmen) stands out.
Bojan Suđić becomes a guest conductor of the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, in 1998, by deepening this cooperation he gained the place of resident conductor in 2000. With this ensemble he performed more than 150 opera and ballet performances, and the peak of the joint work, with the 10 premieres, was the performance at the festival in Wiesbaden in 2003 (Swan Lake). He also enjoyed fruitful collaboration with the Finnish National Opera Ensemble in Helsinki. Bojan Suđić was a guest conductor of over 40 orchestras in the region and the world, among which are the RTV Symphony Orchestra of RTV Slovenia from Ljubljana, the Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, the Croatian RTV Symphony Orchestra, the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra and the Rijeka Philharmonic Orchestra (Croatia), the Macedonian Philharmonic Orchestra in Skopje, The Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra from Sofia and the Plovdiv Philharmonic Orchestra (Bulgaria), the Budapest Symphony Orchestra (Hungary), the Rome Symphony Orchestra (Italy), the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra from Klagenfurt (Austria), the Novosibirsk Philharmonic, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and The State Symphony Capella of Russia from Saint Petersburg (Russia), the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Finnish National Opera and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra (Finland), the Odense Symphony Orchestra (Denmark), the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, the Vesteras Symphony Orchestra and the Umea Symphony Orchestra (Sweden), the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), and the Chilean Symphony Orchestra from Santiago de Chile. Since 2010 he has been working intensively with OFUNAM Orchestra from Mexico City, with which, in 2016, he conducted a solemn concert for the 80th anniversary of the existence of this ensemble with violinist Vadim Repin.
Bojan Suđić as a professor has been conducting the Faculty of Music Symphony Orchestra since 2005. Under his conductor’s guidance, the students of Faculty of Music performed the demanding score of Mahler’s 8th Symphony, Shostakovich ‘s 1st and 5th symphony, The Requiem of Berlioz, Verdi and Mozart, Scheherazade of Rimsky-Korsakov, Pictures at an Exhibition of Mussorgsky, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3. and No. 5, Sibelius’s 2nd Symphony, Mozart’s Symphony No. 39, etc. with remarkable success.
Performing with various ensembles, Suđić accomplishes the mission of presenting new works of domestic authors and those lesser-known or, due to their complexity, rarely performed works of world historical heritage. Since his return to the RTS, as the artistic director and conductor in 2005, Bojan Suđić has been continually expanding the repertoire of the RTS Symphony Orchestra and Choir, gaining recognition of the music audience for the high quality of performed concerts and recordings.
Free entrance