Wednesday, 18 October, 2023, Church of St. Anthony at 8 P.M.
Ljubiša Jovanović, Flute
Dejan Mlađenović, Viola
Aleksandar Serdar, Piano
Program:
Johann Sebastian Bach
Trio Sonate for flute, alto and piano in G major BWV 1039
Adagio
Allegro ma non presto
Adagio e piano
Presto
Domenico Scarlatti
Five pieces for piano solo
Andante comodo
Allegro
Allegro
Prestissimo
Allegro
Johann Sebastian Bach
Sonata for Flute and piano in B minor
Andante
Largo e dolce
Presto
Intermission
Franz Schubert
Arpeggione Sonata in A minor for viola and piano
Allegro moderato
Adagio
Allegretto
Frederic Chopin
The Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, for piano
Milan Mihajlović
Bagatelles for flute, viola and piano (first perfomance in this arrangement)
Andante
Allegretto
Adagio
Presto
Free admission
Ljubiša Jovanović obtained his bachelor’s and master's degrees in Belgrade, under the mentorship of Professor Miodrag Azanjac and continued training under Christian Lardé in Paris and Aurèle Nicolet in Basel. A recipient of the Diplôme Supérieur de Concertiste from the L'Ecole Normal Superieur de Musique in Paris in 1983, he has given more than 1,500 concerts in 37 countries around the world, as well as more than 200 masterclasses.
He is the winner of the most prestigious awards and honours, including the City of Belgrade Award (2008, 2013), St. Sava Award for special contribution to the development of education in the Republic of Serbia (2009), Golden Medal in honor of the 75th anniversary of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra (1998), First Prize for Interpretation at the International Review of Composers (1992, 1998), Golden Link Award for artistic achievements (1992), Aleksandar Pavlovic Award of the Association of Composers of Serbia for decades of artistic promotion of Serbian music (2017), Muzika klasika award for the best concert in 2018, as well as the Belgrade Cultural Fund Award for the best concerts in Belgrade in 1987, 1989, 1991 and 1992. In 2021, he received the highest university award, the Sreten Stojanović Great Golden Plaque with a Charter, for his many years of significant support to the development and activities of the Faculty of Music and the University of Arts in Belgrade and his outstanding contribution in the field of education, art and culture.
The greatest flautists of today have collaborated and performed with this artist, including Aurèle Nicolet, Irena Grafenauer, Emmanuel Pahud, Michel Debost, Christian Lardé, Silvia Careddu, Guoliang Han, Yubeen Kim. His recordings are on over 50 CD releases. During more than 35 years of artistic activity, he premiered over 120 concert, solo and chamber compositions by Serbian authors.
Jovanović held the position of solo flutist of the Belgrade Opera and Ballet (1978–1988), the Symphony Orchestra of the Serbian Radio and Television (1988–1989) and the Belgrade Philharmonic (1989–2004). A professor at the Music Academy in Cetinje from 1996 to 2014, he has served as a professor at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade since 1994, at which he was also Vice Dean for Arts and Sciences from 2002 to 2009.
He is the founder and president of the Camerata Serbica Orchestra (2004), as well as the classical music festival BUNT (Belgrade Art New Territory, 2013). Since 2010, he has been the artistic leader and conductor of the Lola Classic Ensemble and since 2015, the artistic director of the distinguished international competition Anton Eberst in Novi Sad. He conducted the Lola Classic Ensemble at the BEMUS and BUNT festivals, the Camerata Serbica Orchestra in Novi Sad and Belgrade, the Zhengzhou Symphony Orchestra on a tour in China (2016), as well as at the European Summer Music Academy (2015, 2016) and the DAM Festival (2016). He has been the conductor and artistic leader of the Children's Philharmonic since 2016.
Aleksandar Serdar was born in Belgrade. After completing his studies in Novi Sad, he continued his education in the USA and Italy. His development in music was helped by Sergio Perticaroli and Leon Fleischer, who strongly influenced his style of playing. He participated in many international competitions, at which he received prestigious awards, including the Arthur Rubinstein Award in Tel Aviv and the Rina Sala Gallo Award in Monza, what launched his international career.
He has performed recitals and with orchestras in almost all European countries, North America, Brazil, Peru, Morocco, Lebanon, Israel, Thailand and Japan. He has played with the philharmonic orchestras in Belgrade, Bremen, Sofia, Zagreb, Turin, Munich, Toulouse, Lille, San Jose, Slovenia, Dresden, alongside conductors such as Jean-Claude Casadesus, Jörg Peter Weigle, Emil Tabakov, Mandy Rodan, Marcello Viotti, Michel Plasson.
In the last few years, his numerous successful concerts in Europe have attracted the attention of critics and organizers of concert seasons and festivals. He has played in concert halls such as the Théâtre de Châtel in Paris, the Louvre Hall, the Tonhalle in Zurich, the Alice Tully Hall in New York's Lincoln Center, as well as at festivals, including La Roque d'Anthéron in France, La Folle Journée de Nantes, Sully-sur-Loire Festival, St. Riquier Festival, Schleasu Holstein in Hamburg, Montpellier Festival of Radio France. He released his first CD for EMI Classics, which received excellent reviews from music magazines, as well as his first CD with Baroque repertoire for the Serbian record label PGP.
Since 1999, Serdar has been working at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, currently serving as a professor, and has held the position of professor at the Faculty of Arts in Niš since 2006. He has been a member of numerous national and international juries. In March 2007, he started implementing the National Concert Season project, whose goal is the decentralization of classical music. The project was implemented in 16 cities with great success and ended in June 2007. In 2012, Serdar published his manual entitled The Development of Piano Technique, published by the Montenegrin Music Centre.
Over the course of his artistic career, violist Dejan Mlađenović gave more than 300 concerts as a soloist, performing with many distinguished chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras and famous pianists in prestigious concert halls, such as the Salle Gaveau in Paris, Wigmore Hall in London, Holywell Music Room and Jacqueline du Pré Music Building in Oxford, Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory Grand Hall, Walton Art Centre in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Megaron Concert Hall in Athens among others. He performed in Serbia, France, Israel, Spain, Norway, Greece, Italy, Romania, Macedonia, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Denmark, Great Britain and the USA .
On several occasions he performed, alongside renewed conductors, some of the most important viola concertos, created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as the concerts of Alfred Schnittke, Giya Kancheli, Krzysztof Penderecki, William Walton, Frank Martin, Ivana Stefanović, Ivan Jeftić, Vlastimir Trajković etc.
His repertoire includes all the standard pieces written for the viola, as well as those of a more recent date. To date, five viola concertos, several sonatas and smaller works for solo viola and for viola and piano have been composed and dedicated to him. As a soloist, he has made recordings and released seven CDs for radio stations and record labels in France, Spain, Greece, Norway, Russia, Great Britain and Serbia. He is recognized as 'one of the Balkans’ finest violists – an artist whose marvellous expressivity, sonorous tone, and colour have won him praise by audiences and critics alike' (quote from the American press on the occasion of the tour in the USA).
Mlađenović completed his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in viola performance from the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, with Professor Petar Ivanović. As a scholarship recipient of the French government, he continued his studies at the Paris Conservatory (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris), where he was the first Yugoslav to be accepted into the Troisième Cycle – Cycle de Perfectionnement on any instrument and earned a master's degree in viola studies with Gérard-a Caussé, as well as a master's degree in chamber music studies with Jean-a Mouillère. During that period, he attended master classes by Yuri Bashmet, Gérard Caussé (as a scholarship holder of the Academia Chigiana in Siena on two occasions), Grigori Zhislin (in Grožnjan, Croatia), Jesse Levine (in Paris), Emanuel Vardi, as well as Rivka Golani in Great Britain.
In addition to his active career as a concert soloist, he serves as a professor of viola at the Faculty of Music of the University of Arts in Belgrade, with whom more than forty students graduated, completed their master’s degrees and presented their doctoral artistic projects. For many years, Mlađenović was also a string quartet professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, as well as the artistic director of the Camerata Academica chamber orchestra and a member of the Goldberg Trio with M. Jokanović, violin, and I. Varga, cello. He held a large number of viola and chamber music masterclasses in Serbia, countries of the former Yugoslavia, Israel, Germany, Norway, the USA. In 2020, he released the double CD – Johann Sebastian Bach: Suites à Violoncello Solo senza Basso (Suite for Cello Solo without Bass), with viola performances of all six Bach's suites for cello solo.