Miloš Raičković, composer and conductor, was born in Belgrade in 1956. He studied composition with Vasilije Mokranjac, Olivier Messiaen and David Del Tredici; and conducting with Borislav Pašćan, Pierre Dervaux, Barry Brisk and Herbert Blomstedt. He holds a Ph.D. in composition from The City University of New York, and has taught at several universities in the U.S. and Japan. While in Belgrade, Miloš Raičković was the founder of the Ensemble for Other New Music (1977), as well as one of the founders of the Belgrade Youth Philharmonic (1977).

Raičković’s music has been performed in numerous venues in Europe and the USA, including the Warsaw Autumn Festival, Zagreb Music Biennale, Europhonia Radio Festival, La MaMa Etc. and Miller Theater in New York, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Among the performers of Raičković’s orchestral music are the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Belgrade Radio Symphony Orchestra (Milen Nachev, David Porcelijn and Miloš Raićković, conductors), Stanislav Binički Orchestra, as well as many orchestras in the USA.

Miloš Raičković’s orchestral music is released on Mode Records, on the CD New Classicism, featuring pianist Margaret Leng Tan and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. Raičković’s latest CD, B-A-G-D-A-D (Albany Records), features a collection of antiwar pieces.His choral work Parastos is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

He currently resides in New York.

Winter Waltz (2006), world premiere

Winter Waltz was originally written for piano in 2005, for pianist Nada Kolundžija. The orchestral version was written in 2006. Tonight’s performance is the world premiere. Winter Waltz belongs to my “style” which I like to call New Classicism. In 1979, I wrote: “New Classicism may be roughly defined as a blend of musical Minimalism and the styles of Viennese Classical and early Romantic music. Its form is Classical (e.g. the sonata cycle), but tonality is reduced to only a few notes of the scale. This reduction gives tonal music a new quality—a new energy.”