The American composer George Gershwin, who knew how to recognize in his compositions the most beautiful things from the exuberant musical world of American blacks, never composed a violin concerto for Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), although he promised to do so. That's why Heifetz himself took up the arrangement of Gershwin's music, so that his repertoire includes An American in Paris, Three Preludes for Piano, and a number of excerpts from the opera Porgy and Bess. Heifetz's arrangements contributed to the popularization of Gershwin's music, with whom Heifetz met and befriended in the 1947s. These virtuoso transcriptions of excerpts from the Three Preludes date from 1926 and capture the excitement of Gershwin's score in a unique and fascinating way. The original compositions were created in XNUMX, and the composer himself performed them at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. The influence of jazz can be heard in blues motifs, syncopated rhythm, harmony in which the seventh interval is emphasized, and in the duality of major and minor in the so-called blues scale.
Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas, or Four Seasons, is a series of four tangos by Ástor Piazzolla that describe the seasons in Buenos Aires. Verano Porteño (Summer in Buenos Aires), was originally written as part of the incidental music for the play Melenita de oro by AR Muñoz. The Four Tangos, which Piazzolla did not necessarily intend as a cycle, have been compared to Vivaldi's The Seasons, after the Russian composer Leonid Desyatnikov arranged them for violin and strings, transforming each of Piazzolla's movements into three-part compositions. In addition, he adds quotes from Vivaldi's Seasons to Piazzolla's compositions, thus inserting a quote from Vivaldi's Winter concerto into Piazzolla's Summer.
The song Bohemian Rhapsody by the British rock group Queen is one of the most recognizable pieces of rock music in general. It was written by the group's singer, Freddie Mercury, and was released in 1975 as a single from the album A Night at the Opera. The composition belongs to the genre of progressive rock, composed rhapsodicly, from a series of chained fragments - an introductory part, a ballad segment, an opera fragment, a part of hard rock expressions and a calming coda. The lyrics of the song touch on various topics, from a distance and ironically bringing associations to the opera (Scaramouche, fandango, Galileo Galilei, Figaro, Beelzebub and the cry of Bismillah!). Among the numerous arrangements is that of the Italian cellist and composer Stefano Cabrera, the author of numerous film and television scores, including those for the series Hotel Portofino (2022) and Suspect (2022).
One of the most significant works in the oeuvre of the German composer Carl Orff is his stage cantata Carmina Burana, composed in 1935-1936. year. Orff selects 24 texts from the medieval collection of songs of the same name. The texts, mostly secular, talk about different topics: from the impermanence of happiness and wealth, to the ephemerality of life, the joy of the return of spring or the pleasures of drinking, eating, gambling and lust. The theatrical character of the cantata, which derives from Orff's concept of Theatrum Mundi, in which music, movement and speech are inseparable, combined with powerful music in which archaic melodies are permeated with strong rhythms and rich orchestration, have a quality of liveliness and energy that make it one of the masterpieces - works of music of the 20th century. Although it exists in two versions by the author: one for a large ensemble of choir and orchestra, the other for choir, percussion and piano, the music of the cantata also exists in numerous different arrangements by other musicians. Stefan Milenković found in the composer of classical, theater and film music, Ana Krstajić, an ideal collaborator in the realization of the idea of the interpretation of this Orff work. Her arrangement for violin and strings was performed for the first time by Stefan Milenković and Camerata Novi Sad.
Zrinka Matić
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Crowned in Serbia with the awards Artist of the Century and Most Humane Person, Stefan Milenković, whom the New York Times called "a true virtuoso", played in some of the most prestigious halls in the world, such as Carnegie Hall in New York, Kennedy Center in Washington, Cadogan in London, Suntori in Tokyo and La Fenice in Venice. He has performed with renowned orchestras such as the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Hannover, the Indianapolis State Symphony Orchestra, the Utah State Symphony Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Helsinki Philharmonic, under the baton of conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner and Lorin Maazel.
Milenković played for presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, and for Pope John Paul II. At the age of sixteen, he had his thousandth performance, and won prestigious awards at international competitions, including Indianapolis (USA), Queen Elizabeth (Belgium), Hanover (Germany), Paganini (Italy), Lipizzer (Italy), Tibor Varga (Switzerland). , Ludvig Spohr (Germany), Yehudi Menuhin (England). Deeply committed to international humanitarian work, Milenković participated in gala concerts sponsored by UNESCO, with artists such as Plácid Domingo, Alexis Weissenberg and Sir Yehudi Menuhin.
Discography of Mr. Milenkovic includes four commercial releases for the Italian Dynamic label, among them the complete sonatas and partitas for solo violin by JS Bach, the complete opus for solo violin, as well as Nicoló Paganini's 24 Capriccios, and his iconic work In cuor più non mi sento. Milenković also recorded numerous releases for the Serbian label PGP. Audio carriers with the premiere recordings of Vittorio Giannini's piano trio and piano quintet with the participants of the Manchester Chamber Music Festival, as well as recordings of the Violin Concerto in D major by J. Brahms and the Violin Concerto in A minor by A. Glazunov with the Symphony Orchestra of RTV Slovenia, were recently published. under the direction of maestro En Shao, for the RTV SLO Klasika label.
As an artist with eclectic stylistic interests, Milenković collaborated with the British rock band Gorillaz, guitarist Vlatko Stefanovski and lutenist Edin Karamazova. He studied in the class of famous professor Dorothy De Lay at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York. Dedicated to pedagogical work, he taught at the Juilliard School as an assistant to Itzhak Perlman. This led to an offer for a professorship at the University of Illinois, where Milenkovic taught from 2006 to 2021. From the fall of 2021, he is a professor at the Academy of Music in Novi Sad, and the artistic director of the new concert hall in the same city.
Stefan Milenković plays on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin from 1783.
The Zadar Chamber Orchestra has been operating since 1961 and is one of the most representative Croatian chamber ensembles. Its chief conductor is maestro Ivan Repušić. In its development, the Orchestra has gone through a difficult path. Founder Pavle Dešpalj and artistic directors Petar Vrbančić, Dragan Novak and Ivan Repušić, with tireless effort and work, realized the goal that was clearly set at the beginning: to provide concerts and the joy of playing music in Zadar and the people of Zadar. To date, the Zadar Chamber Orchestra has held more than 150 concerts under the direction of Pavel Dešpalj, Igor Kuljerić, Petr Vrbančić, Valter Dešpalj, Maja Dešpalj-Begović, Antun Dolički, Branka Višić Karavid, Tetsuji Honna, Eda Mičić, Berislav Šipus, Tomislav Fačini, Chikara Iwamura, Tonči Bilić and others. Radovan Vlatković, Giorgio Surjan, Boštjan Lipovšek, Marin Maras, Evelin Novak, Martina Filjak, Prerad Deticek, Ljiljana Molnar-Talajić, Pavica Gvozdić, Valentina Fijačko Kobić, Petrit Çeku, Srđan Bulat, Željko Milić performed as soloists, along with Zadar string players. , Vedran Kocelj, as well as many people from Zadar: Gordana Zubović Pavić, Jurica Šoša, Mario Šoša, Lucija Brnadić, Ankica Šoša Graziani, Boris Martinović and others. The orchestra has toured in Austria, France, Spain and at Croatian music festivals. The repertoire he cherishes includes works from baroque, classicism and romanticism to contemporary music. The orchestra is particularly inclined to perform works by Croatian composers, and its repertoire regularly includes
commissioned works by contemporary domestic authors. The concertmaster of the Zadar Chamber Orchestra is the renowned Croatian violinist Marco Graziani.
2024-06-05 Milenkovic Program booklet
George Gershwin: Three Preludes (arr. Jascha Heifetz) (arranged for violin and strings by Vladimir Korać)
Astor Piazzolla: Summer from the Four Seasons (dir. Leonid Desyatnikov)
Queen/Freddie Mercury: Bohemian Rhapsody (arr. Stefano Cabrera)
Carl Orff: Carmina Burana (arr. Ana Krstajić)
