Final Concert for the End of the Year on December 30 at Kolarac Grand Hall

The final concert for the end of 2020 will be held at the Grand Hall of the Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment building on December 30 at noon.

According to the website of the Kolarac Endowment, the monumental cycle Twenty Visions of the Infant Jesus (1944), one of the most significant works of the famous French composer Olivier Messiaen, will be performed on the piano by Nemanja Egeric.

The work is an example of program music. It features a memorable use of leitmotifs of the Wagnerian type. The composition is religious-themed and focus on the Biblical tale of Christ’s birth. Unlike the traditional artistic representations of the Christmas narrative, Messiaen uses an idiosyncratic system of musical cues to express certain extramusical ideas and Christian symbolism. It could be said that, through this cycle, Messiaen brough his vision of Christian faith to a profane world in a theological-artistic way, primarily by shedding light on the Christological aspect.

From the aspect of a piano performance, this cycle is among the lengthiest and most demanding works. The Serbian premiere of the Twenty Visions of the Infant Jesus took place in the early 1990s in Belgrade, when the work was performed by Roger Muraro. Thanks to Nemanja Egeric, the composition will be performed in its integral form for the first time by a Serbian pianist. Egeric has also dealt with the work from a theoretical angle as part of his PhD artistic project.

The ticket price is RSD 500.

Zadužbina Ilije M. Kolarca Beograd

Kolarac Endowment

Olivier Messiaen

Nemanja Egerić

concert

Twenty Visions of the Infant Jesus