Meet Nemanja Radulović

You started playing the violin at a young age – how soon did you realise that music would become such an important part of your life?

I started to play the violin when I was seven and my first concert was a few months later, aged seven-and-a-half. I was playing a Vivaldi concerto with the school orchestra, and I remember the feeling on stage, which helped me to decide to become a professional musician. The stage is like a second home. I see it as being like a magical box; inside you have all these different emotions that you can share with the audience through the music.

You have a special rapport with the Philharmonia and Santtu – what’s it like to be playing with these musicians again?

My first experience with the Philharmonia Orchestra was last year at the Enescu Festival. I was really very impressed by the Orchestra; we had only one rehearsal just before the concert but I enjoyed it so much. And having Santtu there: with him there is this kind of intuition, but also of taking risks during the concert. I love playing with him because there is this sense of flow.

What does Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 mean to you?

I was 12 when I first got the score of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto. Even now, I still go back to that feeling that I had when I was 12 and try to find the simplicity of that interpretation.

How do you approach each movement?

You have one concerto, but three completely different movements. The first movement starts in a very different way from other concertos, because the violin starts alone, so for the beginning, I always like to take some time to get the tempo in my mind before I start. In the second movement, you can feel Prokofiev but, on the other hand, the simplicity of the melody always puts me in mind of Mozart – which is a paradox, because we don’t usually connect Mozart and Prokofiev together. And after the ending of this second movement, we almost always play attacca: straight into the finale.

What advice would you offer to young musicians today?

The advice I would give to a younger musician is to remember why they started. I think everything is about the love and passion that you get from that beginning, because later, with experience, you have many different feelings and sometimes forget why you started to play. So just go back to the first day when you met your instrument and remember that feeling!

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