Nemanja Radulović TCHAIKOVSKY Violin Concerto - Rococo Variations

After his exciting journey into the musical tradition of Eastern Europe (Journey East) and the Baroque sound-scapes of J.S. Bach (Bach), Nemanja Radulovic now turns his attention to the Russian master of the Romantic era, Tchaikovsky, excelling as violinist and (in an arrangement of the famed Rococo-Variations for viola and string ensemble) a violist.
Bringing together Tchaikovsky’s two most important works for solo strings and orchestra is bringing together the two most relevant poles of his life – Belgrade and Paris: The Rococo Variations are linked to the first part of his life, when he was a student in Belgrade before the Balkan war. At this time Nemanja not only used to play the violin, but also viola and sometimes the cello. Playing an arranged viola version of the Rococo variations which originally were composed for cello, takes him back to his musical childhood in Belgrade.

Yvan Cassar, who worked with Nemanja on Journey East has now produced compelling arrangements for strings and piano of the Rococo Variations. They provide a lightness and an energy that are perfectly suited for the neoclassical sound of Tchaikovsky’s music.

The Rococo Variations were recorded in Belgrade with ensemble Double Sens (French for: “double direction” & “double meaning”). The group reflects perfectly Nemanja’s dual past between Paris and Belgrade as it includes his former student-friends for Serbia, and his friends from the Conservatoire de Paris (including 2 members of the Fontanarosa family).

The Tchaikovsky concerto is linked to Nemanja’s arrival in Paris. He began to work on the concerto with his Conservatoire de Paris’ teacher Patrice Fontanarosa. Since then, this piece has been the concerto Nemanja has played most often during his career opening the doors to the great concert halls of the world like in Paris, London or Tokyo.

The concerto was recorded in Istanbul with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra and Sascha Goetzel, with which Nemanja feels he finds the freedom and mutual sprit to develop and express what is fundamentally important to him in the respective work.
2018 marks the 125th anniversary of the death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893).

Nemanja Radulović LES 5 SAISONS

Nemanja Radulović’s performance of The Four Seasons comes as much from the heart as it does from the printed page. He often toys with rhythms and tempos, dynamics are taken to such extremes that at times the music become just audible, and mood swings from pensiveness to mercurial vivacity happen in the twinkling of an eye.
You could hardly quibble at the technical brilliance he brings to the music, ‘Summer’ being an example of his left-hand alacrity as he drives tempos forwards at a breathless pace. Then, just when you expect rhythms to be highly stressed in the finale of ‘Autumn’, the performance becomes soft-grained. For my library I would always opt for safety with the excellent Andrew Manze and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Warner), but with the 15 members of Double Sens playing with admirable unity, Radulović certainly captures the attention.
Aleksandar Sedlar’s Spring in Japan portrays the great earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, and the work moves from the sounds of popular music to suggest the agony of the event. A smaller string group, The Devil’s Trills, ably conjures up the appropriate sounds. Up-front recorded balance gives suitable priority to Radulović. (David Denton)

Nemanja Radulović BACH

Asked why he has chosen to tackle music by Bach for his new album, the violinist Nemanja Radulović might almost hesitate before answering, so self-evident does his reply appear to him and so natural is the affinity that he feels for Bach. For him, the present recording is the logical successor to his two previous releases: in the wake of Vivaldi and his project The Five Seasons, he continues his personal exploration of the Baroque repertory with his ensemble Double Sens; and, like Journey East, this recording, too, represents a reflection on his own particular roots – in this case, his musical roots. The three words that recur here with leitmotivic regularity are: roots, loyalties and families. 

Roots. It all started with Bach. As with so many other musicians, Bach remains bound up with Nemanja Radulović’s earliest musical memories as a violinist, for even as a boy in Belgrade, he was already working on this repertory, in particular the Sonatas and Partitas, movements from which he has included in the present CD. Here pride of place goes to the Chaconne, which is the piece he prefers above all – alongside the Beethoven Violin Concerto, he adds by way of an explanation. The concertos, too, were a part of Radulović ’s repertory before he moved with his family to France. On the present release he is partnered by Tijana Milošević in the Double Violin Concerto BWV 1043. She was already appearing with him in this work while they were students at the Belgrade Conservatory. Nemanja also worked on the Viola Concerto in C minor attributed for a time to Johann Christian Bach – he learnt to play both the viola and the cello while he was still living in Belgrade, but he had to put them to one side when he entered the Paris Conservatoire in order to concentrate on the violin. This is the first time that Nemanja Radulović has returned to the viola for the purposes of a recording.