Goran Bregovic: Three Letters from Sarajevo / BTF 2017

Featuring: Goran Bregovic – voice, guitar, keyboards,Milena Wilke, Semih Çelikel, Gershon Leizerson– violin, Goran Bregovic Wedding and Funeral Orchestra, Dohnányi Orchestra Budafok

Members of the Goran Bregovic Wedding and Funeral Orchestra: Muharem Redzepi – voice, goc (traditional drum), Bokan Stankovic – flute, trumpet, Dragic Velickovic – trumpet, Stojan Dimov – clarinet, saxophone, Aleksandar Rajkovic, Milos Mihajlovic – trombone

Featured singers: Ludmila Radkova-Traikova, Daniela Radkova-Aleksandrova, Dejan Pesic, Milan Panic, Ranko Jovic, Aleksandar Novakovic, Dusan Ljubinkovic, Sinisa Dutina

Sound: Nemanja Trajkovic

Conductor: Gábor Hollerung

In its history, Bosnia has been part of many empires: Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Austro–Hungarian… each has left its imprint and its religion – Catholic, Orthodox, Islam, Sephardic Jews, expelled from Spain, arrive in the 16th century. Sarajevo becomes the city of four religions, ”Jerusalem of the Balkans”, and a metaphor for a peaceful cohabitation and also the horror of hate. From Sarajevo come the greatest number of children born of mixed marriages in ex-Yugoslavia, the First World War started in Sarajevo, in the Second World War the Muslims of Sarajevo hid the Jewish families from common enemy, images of the greatest horror dating from the recent war in Bosnia come from Sarajevo… 

Goran Bregovic’s new work Three Letters from Sarajevo is inspired by this metaphor. It is written for a solo instrument, the violin, that – played in Western, Oriental and Klezmer way – unites on the allegorical level the three religions that are the biggest treasure and curse of Sarajevo.

Orchestration for this work was entrusted to four talented musicians from Serbia: Aleksandar Sedlar, Isidora Zebeljan, Ninoslav Ademovic and Ognjan Radivojevic. 

Partner: Festival de Musique de St. Denis, France