The Serbian violinist
Nemanja Radulovic has attempted to broaden the appeal of classical music through his charismatic image and innovative programming concepts. He has founded two ensembles of his own to aid in the realization of his ideas.
Radulovic was born in Nis, Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia, on October 18, 1985. He took up the violin in 1992, and by 1996 he had won a Belgrade Youth Award. The following year he won the Talent 1997 prize from Serbia's Ministry of Education, and that was followed by a series of youth awards around Eastern Europe and in France.
Radulovic enrolled at age 13 at the Hochscule für Musik Saar in Germany, returned to Serbia for further study at the University of the Arts in Belgrade, and moved to Paris in 2000 for more work at the Conservatoire Nationale in Paris.
Radulovic has also taken master classes with
Yehudi Menuhin, among others. He won the top prize at the Joseph Joachim International Competition in Germany in 2003, and he was named Discovery of the Year at France's Victoires awards in 2005. Busy from the start, his concert career received a major boost in 2006 when he substituted for the ailing
Maxim Vengerov in a performance of the
Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under
Myung-Whun Chung. Since then, he has performed more than 1,000 concerts internationally.
By that time, the 21-year-old violinist had already made his recording debut with a recital of pieces by
Bach, Miletic,
Paganini, and
Ysaÿe on the TransArt label. He recorded several more albums with TransArt and Art Act before signing with Deutsche Grammophon in 2013 and releasing the album
Paganini Fantasy. His album
Journey East (2014) focused on repertory with strongly rhythmic roots from his native Eastern Europe and utilized both of his chamber groups: Les Trilles du Diable and
Double Sens.
Radulovic recorded the
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35, and an arrangement of the Rococo Variations, Op. 33, with the
Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra for Deutsche Grammophon in
2017.