26 February 2019 - The fifth edition of the contemporary piano music festival Forte piano - Homage to Classics, organised by the Art School of Music and Ballet "Vasa Pavić” and Cultural and Information Centre “Budo Tomović", will be held on 26 and 27 February 2019 in Podgorica. The festival is supported by the French Institute in Montenegro. This year's festival honours music classics, whose heritage is inspired by the generations of contemporary composers. Hence the thematic title "Homage to Classics".
The festival will open on Tuesday, February 26 at 1 pm, at the concert hall of the Vasa Pavić Music School, with the performance of students of the secondary music school who got their first composition experience in the class of composer Milivoje Pićurić. At a concert entitled "Stylistic Composing Exercises," students will present works written in the style of their favourite composers.
On the same day, on the big stage of CIC "Budo Tomović" at 7 pm, a concert titled "The Contemporary and Classics" will be held, where contemporary music performances by various authors will be performed, from Žarko Mirković and Slobodanka Bobana Dabović from Montenegro, Vasilije Mokranjac and Dejan Despić from Serbia, Marija Gracio from Croatia to world famous composers Helmut Lachenmann from Germany and Alfred Schnittke from Russia. Montenegrin pianists of the younger generation Milena Kovač, Vesna Damjanović, Nataša Popović, Tamara Jasović, Milena Nikočević as well as Aljoša Lečić from Croatia will also take part in the concert performance.
On the second day of the festival, on Wednesday, February 27, in the concert hall of the Music School "Vasa Pavić", the festival "Modern Contemporary Piano" will be presented at 1 pm, which is organised by the Frederik Chopin Conservatory (Conservatoire Frédéric Chopin) in Paris under the auspices of the Municipality of Paris. The festival will feature pianist Armin Varvarian, festival coordinator.
The festival continues on the big stage of the CIC "Budo Tomović" in several program units: at 5 pm a concert "French devoted to classics" featuring works by French composers: Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Henri Dutilleux, Arthur Honegger, Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc, Gérard Gasparian, Nobuhiro Okada. Students of the music school "Vasa Pavić" will perform at this concert and for the first time they will be accompanied by students from other Montenegrin secondary music schools: "Andre Navara" from Podgorica and "Dara Čokorilo" from Nikšić as well as from the Conservatory "Frederik Chopin" from Paris. The continuation of the festival will include a concert entitled "In the style of Prokofiev", which represents a collection of compositions titled "The Ten Grimaces" by a contemporary French composer Bernard Col, written in the style of the great Russian classic of the 20th century.
For the end of the festival, the promotion of piano music by Aleksandar Perunović, Montenegrin composer and docent at the Music Academy in Cetinje, will be held at the DODEST Hall at 7 pm, followed by a full-time concert by pianist Bojan Martinović at 8 pm.
The program of the festival will include several pieces that will be performed for the first time in Montenegro, as well as the world premiere of the compositions by Nobuhiro Okada and Aleksandar Perunović.
