The series For Megalomaniacs will be opened by the Belgrade Philharmonic’s third commissioned piece – Boreas, the God of North Wind by Vuk Kulenović, under the baton of none other than his son Vladimir Kulenović, on Friday, 7 October (Kolarac, 8pm). A megalomaniac number of the Belrgade Philharmonic Orchestra soloists will be playing Mozart, while the concert will be rounded off with Strauss’ monumental Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Kulenović’s piece Boreas, the God of North Wind is one of five pieces commissions by the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra to open the concert season 2016/17, in accordance with its thematic series. The composer admits to being obsessed and drawn to this connection and play of programmatic and abstract. He explained the first of many riddles that the BPO musicians will be solving in this concert: “I let the music say what the words in the title of the piece cannot convey, and let the words give the name to what only the music can convey. But what exactly I wanted to say – I don’t even know it myself. It is the same in this case, I am leaving it to the musicians and the listeners to find out what I don’t know”.
Although he has conducted his father’s music before, this will be the first time Vladimir Kulenović will be premiering it: “The largest part of a conductor’s work is to study the composer in order to identify oneself with his/her work. However, in this case this step is automatic, because it is a language in which I understand every word“, says young Kulenović, proud of the opportunity to join his farther in the final stage of this composition’s creation.
Sinfonia concertante, one of the greatest mysteries in the history of music caused by the uncertainty of whether it was indeed written by Mozart, will be performed by Bojan Pešić (oboe), Mihailo Samoran (clarinet), Nikola Ćirić (horn) and Sava Djurić (bassoon). As for the other one, the greatest enigma about the meaning of life and the nature of the universe, it will be debated by the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra in Strauss’ Zarathustra, a piece that became especially popular after it featured in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“Mozart was the first megalomaniac, a visionary and a musical revolutionary, who defined the next step, whereas Strauss took a step further, although in a different way. It is necessary to be a megalomaniac if one wants to be a cog in the mechanism of evolution; we need to make big plans for all that is brave and noble”, younger Kulenović gave is interpretation of this concept. The next concert from the series dedicated to those who always expect more will be conducted by Uroš Lajovic on 25 November.
