Nemanja Radulović - Journey East (2015) [HDTracks]

For his international debut album on the Yellow Label, the brilliant young violinist Nemanja Radulović proposes a journey throughout the musical traditions of Eastern Europe. The selection contains all-time favorites, both classical and popular, from Eastern Europe, ranging from core classical pieces to traditional folk melodies to film music – among them Brahms’ Hungarian Dance, Dvořák’s Songs my mother taught me and William’s music from the film Schindler’s list.
Nemanja Radulović represents a boldly innovative young generation of classical artists – profoundly gifted and possessing enormous stage presence, he is constantly seeking new ways to communicate his fiery and innately musical performances to an ever-wider audience. He launched his international career in 2006 when he stood in for Maxim Vengerov at Paris’s Salle Pleyel, playing the Beethoven concerto to great acclaim with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Myung-Whun Chung.
The album is produced by the hugely successful French composer-producer Yvan Cassar – known for his work with platinum-selling artists such as Roberto Alagna.

Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulovic, long flying hair and all, evokes the spirit and sound of the central European violinists of a hundred years ago. On this collection of pieces, mostly associated with Slavic lands (John Williams' Theme from Schindler's List makes a fascinating exception), he takes new chances, and they pay off big time. Radulovic has developed a vigorously rhythmic style that can build up a good deal of momentum in a piece like the opening Hungarian Dance No. 1 of Brahms, and he effectively alternates these with pieces that lay on the sentiment. What's new here is that Radulovic has reached out and gotten the music he needs from other genres, from unusual sources, and from a variety of ensembles. There are several arrangements by Yvan Cassar that make a wonderful effect. Sample the violin-and-small ensemble version of Khachaturian's Sabre Dance (track 4) for a bit of pure excitement that someone might have come up with in an old Viennese cafe in 1900, but probably not since then. Radulovic draws on some Serbian film soundtracks and on original compositions. He employs not only his usual backing group Les Trilles du Diable, but also a slightly larger string group called Double Sens and, on several tracks, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The musicians back up Radulovic's fiery effects, and the result is perhaps the most colorful and exciting exotic violin recitals in many years. Bravo!