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Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA)

Institute of Musicology SASA

Society for Minimalist Music

Belgrade Festivals Center (CEBEF)

School of Music “Mokranjac,” Belgrade

 

Minimalist Intersections: 9th International Conference on Music and Minimalism

Saturday, June 1, 2024 at 8:00 PM

Hall of the Belgrade Philharmonic

 

An Evening of Philip Glass

 

Vladimir Milošević, piano

Nemanja Stanković, cello

 

ГРАД БЕОГРАД

МИНИСТАРСТВО КУЛТУРЕ

МИНИСТАРСТВО НАУКЕ, ТЕХНОЛОШКОГ РАЗВОЈА И ИНОВАЦИЈА

ЕMORY UNIVERSITY

СОКОЈ

 

Programme

Glassworks “Opening” No. 1 (1981)

“I’m Going to Make a Cake” from The Hours (2002) (arr. Michael Riesman)

Piano Etude No. 2 (1995)

Piano Etude No. 5 (1995/96)

Piano Etude No. 6 (1996)

Piano Etude No. 20 (2012)

Pause

Songs and Poems No. 1 for solo cello (2007)

“The Poet Acts” from The Hours (2002) (trans. Miloš Bralović)

Metamorphosis 2 (1988) (trans. Laura Emmery)

Glassworks “Closing” No. 6 (1981) (trans. Laura Emmery)

Organized by Laura Emmery

 

Vladimir Milošević, one of the most distinctive Serbian pianists today, made his debut at the Carnegie Hall in New York in 2005. Recognized as a rising artist by the New York Concert Artists & Associates, he performed with the NYCA Symphony Orchestra at Merkin Concert Hall in New York in 2014. His performances have taken him to Salle Cortot in Paris, Steinway Hall in London, Konzerthaus in Berlin, Foerster Hall in Prague, Konzerthaus in Vienna, Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, Herkules Hall in Munich, Kennedy Center in Washington, and Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, among many others. Vladimir has received awards in competitions held in France, Poland, the United States, Australia, and Italy. His performances have been recorded for television stations in Japan, Brazil, Canada, and Poland.

Vladimir began his piano education in his hometown of Leskovac, Serbia, and finished his undergraduate and DMA program at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, studying with Nevena Popović. He completed specialized studies in Italy at the Incontri col Maestro Academy in Imola, mentored by Lazar Berman and Michel Dalberto.

Highly active as a chamber musician, Vladimir has collaborated with outstanding soloists such as Stefan Milenković, Roman Simović, Dragan Đorđević, Dmitri Prokofiev, János Bálint, Dejan Gavrić, David Griffiths, and others. He has performed with the Belgrade Philharmonic, RTS Symphony Orchestra, orchestras in Cape Town and Johannesburg, Prague Opera Orchestra, Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra, Porto Symphony Orchestra, Teatro Olimpico Symphony Orchestra, Wollongong Symphony Orchestra, Brittany Symphony Orchestra, and Suzhou Symphony. Vladimir Milošević is Professor of Piano at the Faculty of Music Art in Belgrade, and often leads masterclasses in Lithuania, the United States, China, and Australia, and serves as an international adjudicator.

Since 2022 he has performed with the Trio “Corda,” together with the cellist Nemanja Stanković and violinist Una Stanić. Recently they have received the Prize of the City of Belgrade for Best Classical Concert in 2023.

 

Nemanja Stanković is considered “one of the most notable young stars on the music scene of Serbia” (Radio Belgrade 2). He received his education in Belgrade, Vienna, Salzburg, and Florence, studying under the guidance of Natalia Gutman, Sandra Belić, and Enrico Bronzi. He further honed his skills through masterclasses with renowned musicians such as Alfred Brendel, Jens Peter Maintz, Mischa Mayski, and Ralf Kirshbaum. Nemanja performed as the principal cellist of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra and is currently engaged as a guest principal cellist with the Milan Symphony Orchestra. He boasts numerous solo performances with orchestras including the Belgrade Philharmonic, Radio Television of Serbia Symphony Orchestra, Czech Virtuosi, St George Strings, Camerata Serbica, Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, and Niš Symphony Orchestra.

As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Nemanja Stanković is the recipient of several prestigious awards (including the City of Belgrade “Despot Stefan Lazarević,” “Star of Belgrade,” and SOKOJ’s “Aleksandar Pavlović” award. He was a finalist in many competitions, including “Liezen Wettbewerb,” “Johannes Brahms,” “Fidelio Spezial,” and “Antonio Janigro.” Nemanja has premiered a substantial number of compositions by Serbian composers, eight of which are featured on his album, Traces––New Serbian Music for Cello, recognized as one of the most successful cello releases in 2020.

Currently, Nemanja Stanković holds the position of Assistant Professor in the Department of Chamber Music at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. He is the residential artist of the Kolarac Foundation Hall in Belgrade. Since 2022 he has performed with the Trio “Corda,” together with Una Stanić (violin) and Vladimir Milošević (piano). Recently they have received the Prize of the City of Belgrade for the Best Concert in 2023. Nemanja Stanković currently plays the cello made by Carlos Roberts from Cremona in 2012.

Through his operas, symphonies, compositions for his ensemble, and collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Leonard Cohen to David Bowie, Philip Glass (b. 1937) has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact on the musical and intellectual life of his times. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School, and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with Nadia Boulanger and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble––seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer.

The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops. (philipglass.com)

 

Glassworks was composed in 1981 and originally released in 1982. It is a six-part chamber music work, where each movement can be performed separately: (1) Opening: piano solo (2) Floe (3) Islands (4) Rubric (5) Façades (6) Closing. After his larger-scale concert and stage works, Glassworks was Philip Glass’s successful attempt to create a more pop-oriented “Walkman-appropriate” work, with significantly shorter and more accessible pieces written for the recording studio. In fact, the cover of the cassette release stated that it was “mixed especially for your personal cassette player.” (philipglass.com)

 

The Hours is the original soundtrack composed by Philip Glass for the 2002 film. Directed by Stephen Daldry, The Hours is the story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Based on Michael Cunningham’s 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film interweaves the stories of three women––a book editor in New York, a young mother in California, and the author Virginia Woolf. Their stories intertwine and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition. “This is a movie about art and how art affects life,” explains Philip Glass. “The story is very complicated and the music could take on a very important role in the film, as I saw it––to make it viewable, to make it comprehensible, so the stories of the three women in the film didn’t seem separate, that they were tied together. The music had to be the thread that tied the movie together. There’s no question that the emotional point of view is conveyed by the music. Music is the arrow you shoot in the air. Everything follows that.” (Nonesuch Records)

Composed between 1981 and 2012, Philip Glass conceived The Etudes as a set of 20 works for solo piano written to improve his own performance technique. “I was not trying to compose like Scriabin or Rachmaninoff, who were demonstrating the techniques they already had,” Glass explained. The etudes from the early 1990s may be aspirational in technique, but they are assured in craft––portals into Glass’s world of whirling arpeggios, shocking rhythmic and harmonic turns, and meditative discipline (Joshua Barone, The New York Times). His most personal body of work, the pieces are a self-portrait of a life’s practice, representing some of the most intimate and inventive music of Glass’s oeuvre.

Glass has written comparatively little for solo instruments. The substantial Songs and Poems (2007) is an exception. This seven-movement work is dedicated to cellist Wendy Sutter. The pieces form a dark-textured, emotionally intense, and tragic sequence, with very little of the arpeggiated repeated gestural material that one instantly recognizes as Glass’s style. The work was originally based on the music of Glass’s film score of Chaotic Harmony.

 

Metamorphosis Two is part of the Solo Piano album composed and performed by Philip Glass in 1989, which featured seven pieces: Metamorphosis 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, Mad Rush, and Wichita Vortex Sutra. Metamorphosis Two has a more contemplative and introspective feel, with a haunting melody that is repeated and developed over time. The work was inspired by the 1915 novella The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The theme from this piece formed the basis of one of the main themes in the film The Hours.

 

Laura Emmery