Belgrade Philharmonic’s Concert Season Ends with Diversions, Left Hand Piano, and Planets

The grand closing of the Belgrade Philharmonic’s concert season at Kolarac Hall will be on Friday, June 3 at 8:00 pm, conducted by Kevin Griffiths, with an unusual program. Pianist Dejan Lazić and the orchestra will perform Britten’s Diversions for the left hand, and the Belgrade Philharmonic will be joined by the “Collegium musicum” choir in a collective “viewing” of The Planets by Gustav Holst.

The finale of the Belgrade Philharmonic’s concert season in Kolarac Hall begins with The Walk to the Paradise Garden by Frederick Delius, which is the overture to the opera A Village Romeo and Juliet, in which the composer has moved Shakespeare’s heroes to the then modern Swiss village.

This Walk introduces the audience to Britten’s unusual achievement for piano and orchestra, Diversions, a work written for the left hand, which the Belgrade Philharmonic and pianist Dejan Lazić will perform for the first time. This reunion with the pianist, whose fresh interpretations rank him among the most original and unusual soloists of his generation, will mark the performance of a brilliant score in which one simple theme is transformed through different genres, culminating in a virtuoso sprint to the finish.

The concert closes in spectacular fashion with the dramatic and exciting Planets by Gustav Holst, with the support of the women’s academic choir “Collegium musicum.” Studying astrology, Holst became interested in the influence of the planets on the human psyche, so he titled the movements: Mars, the Bringer of War; Venus, the Bringer of Peace; Mercury, the Winged Messenger; Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity; Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, the Magician; Neptune, the Mystic. The season’s finale is conducted by Maestro Kevin Griffiths, who regularly collaborates with orchestras such as the HR Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Frankfurt Opera, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and many others.

The performance on Friday is the last Belgrade Philharmonic concert in the 21/22 season held at Kolarac Hall, but the crown of this concert year will be the “Beethoven Marathon” performed by the Belgrade Philharmonic together with the Dortmund Philharmonic with Chief Conductor Gabriel Feltz in Novi Sad on June 26 and in Dortmund on June 19. The Belgrade Philharmonic is already inviting its audience to hop aboard and be “On the Right Track,” which is the name of our new concert season 2022/23 for which we have already started selling subscriptions.