Congratulations to Milica Djordjević: her portrait CD, recorded by the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Duncan Ward, Peter Rundel and Johannes Kalitzke, with three orchestral works and a choral work, was honoured with the Premio Abbiati as Album of the Year in the New Music category. The jury praised the composer's ‘great tonal imagination, strong energy, variety and sophistication’.
In the short orchestral work Mali svitac, žestoko ozaren i prestravljen nesnošljivom lepotom (Little firefly, glaringly illuminated and frightened by unbearable beauty), written in 2023 as a commission from the Berliner Philharmoniker, the composer is concerned with ‘the immense energy required to light up’. Her orchestral work Quicksilver was commissioned by musica viva and was premiered in 2016 by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Peter Rundel. Cvor (Knot) for wind instruments, piano and percussion, a work commissioned for the Donaueschinger Musiktage, briefly but very intensely describes a knot that pinches and finally bursts. Mit o ptici (Bird Myth) for choir and orchestra was commissioned by musica viva in 2020 and premiered in 2022 with the Bavarian Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra under Johannes Kalitzke. The four parts of Milica Djordjević's first choral work are based on motifs from a verse epic by the Yugoslav poet Miroslav Antić from 1979.
The jury of the German Record Critics' Award was also enthusiastic and included the recording in the 4/2024 list of the best. "There is dissection and listening into the silence, undulating developments spark large-scale outbursts. The composer achieves an unprecedented density of events in her music (...). The sound culture achieved is simply stupendous," writes Marco Frei in the jury's statement.
BR-KLASSIK CD 900644
