A recording of the concert from the Belgrade Philharmonic’s Love series, under the baton of Permanent Guest Conductor Daniel Raiskin, features three pieces whose theme is love.

The Love series program opens with Francesca da Rimini, Tchaikovsky’s symphonic interpretation after Dante’s Divine Comedy and the second circle of Hell where people are condemned for their adulterous passions. This is followed by Love! – Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, written for the Belgrade Philharmonic  by Serbian composer Ivan Brkljačić, featuring saxophonist Milan Savić.

The author responded to the theme of love, which sometimes emits so much energy that it could drive the entire world: “One of the possible associations to the mentioned love theme could be the energy from something, for example, a rock concert, generated by a popular, adored and a great rock star, on the one hand, and the 100,000 souls in the audience, on the other,” said Brkljačić, for whom this was a second commission by the Belgrade Philharmonic.

The most famous lovers from the late Renaissance to today’s pop culture were described, among others, by Prokofiev in his ballet Romeo and Julia. Unlike Shakespeare, Prokofiev did what the whole of mankind had secretly wished for – the famous story finally got a happy end.

The Love series was part of our Being Human 2018-2019 season in which the Philharmonic wanted to draw attention to the basic human values that are nowadays all-too frequently being neglected. Hence the idea to use archaic and forgotten Serbian words of diverse origin as the titles of our series, and of the entire season. The old Serbian word “Ašikovanje” means courting, wooing, making love.