In the organization of the Serbian Singing Society (SPD) "Unity" (1839) Kotor, in the Church of St. Nicholas in the Old Town, last night a concert was held under the title "Women - Composers of Orthodox Spiritual Music". 

The "Jedinstva" mixed choir performed the works of: Vera Milanković, Nataša Đuragić, Jelena Tonić, Julijanije Denisova, Tamara Adamov Petijević, Jaroslava Pščednik, Natalija Rogožkina, Elena Junek, Ivana Srbljan, Varvara Kaljužnaja, Anastasija Ehlakova Natalija Knjažinskaja.

Sopranos prof. had solo performances. Aleksandra Magud and Isidora Nikolić. Piano accompaniment by prof. Nikola Vuckovic.

Conductor Mihajlo Lazarevic, MSc, told Radio Kotor that "the concert was completely special and unique".

"The reason - a topic that was completely different from the usual repertoire of "Unity", in the sense of the one who wrote the compositions. There is no particular reason for the decision to make a special and unique concert dedicated to women composers of Orthodox spiritual music, but over time certain compositions in our repertoire somehow crystallized, starting with Natalija Knjažinskaja, a composer who lived in Kotor for a while. She offered to cooperate with SPD Jedinstvo, in order to perform her compositions from time to time time, so the first one we performed was Bishop Danilo's "Prayer", a text from Gorski vijenc, for one of our jubilees. That's how everything started spontaneously", said Lazarević.

Research on the Internet about women in general who are engaged in composing, especially Orthodox spiritual music, also helped.

"Little by little, that's how that world began to be discovered. Talking with our colleagues, also conductors or musicologists, we came up with certain information and started to choose a repertoire. As you could see in last night's program, all the women who write such music are of Slavic origin. So in the repertoire we had from our own to female composers from Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Macedonia, Bulgaria... That was a selection for now. However, how the idea "heated up" and how everything started talked about it more in some musical and conducting circles, so I started receiving more and more notes and in the last two months I received a score for another concert. We saw that there is interest, so this concept will live on in some different forms because we will supplement it, maybe remove some compositions from the repertoire, add some new ones and thus extend its life span", said Lazarevic.

Predrag Nikolić

(Radio Kotor)