The first Indonesian conductor to lead the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Adrian Prabava will appear in a concert For Lovers, on Friday, 10 March (Kolarac, 8pm). He and the orchestra will present the most lovable stories, such as Romeo and Juliette from Tchaikovsky’s perspective and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, while the young cellist Andrei Ioniță will spark additional romance with Faure’s Elegy and Saint-Saëns’ Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra.
 
Prabava made his international breakthrough in 2005, after his great success at the International Competition for Young Conductors in Besançon. His subsequent career was greatly influenced by the celebrated Maestro Kurt Masur, at the time when Prabava worked as Masur’s assistant conductor at the Orchestre National de France in Paris. Despite his eastern background, his musical personality belongs to the western culture, in which he has been successfully building his career.
 
Enchanted by the Belgrade Philharmonic’s character and joyousness of playing, Prabava believes it is his task to find the right balance and establish control of these qualities: “The programme we are playing is very popular, the BPO has performed it many times, but they are open for new ideas, which I am trying to explore digging deep to the core of the score”, said Prabava. According to him, the role of music is to challenge and ask questions, “it allows us to discover ourselves, to ask who we really are. That is the question I would like to ask the Belgrade audience on Friday”.
 
The fourth philharmonic rendezvous For Lovers opens by Tchaikovsky’s overture-fantasy Romeo and Juliette, and closes with suites Nos. 1 and 2 from Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé. Winner of the First Prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, young Andrei Ioniță will demonstrate his virtuosity and skills in Saint-Saëns’ popular Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra.
 
The Friday’s concert of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra is traditionally dedicated to the memory of late Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić.