The first generations of educated composers of Serbian artistic classical music at the beginning of the 20th century, wrote mostly in the musical language of neo-Romanticism, nurturing traditional musical forms. In technical and artistic terms, they brought Serbian music closer to the European level. One of these composers, Stevan Hristić, educated in Belgrade and Leipzig, created a stylistic expression and compositional principle largely based on Beethoven’s tradition. In that sense, a good example is his Fantasy for violin and orchestra (1908), one of the author’s first attempts at writing symphonic music. It will be performed by Ksenija Milošević, the Belgrade Philharmonic’s assistant concertmaster.

The second part of the concert will open with Robert Schumann’s Manfred Overture, followed by an unusual composition, Rendering, by Luciano Berio, which takes as its structure the fragmentary score of Schubert’s uncompleted Symphony in D major. Berio leaves Schubert’s original sections completely intact and intervenes only in the parts of the score where the music is completely missing or where the composer only printed a certain fragment. In the parts where he intervenes, Berio uses only Schubert’s motifs and quotations from the existing score, giving the impression of a fully credible representation of the composer’s style and technique.