Milena Stanković, bassoon and Uki Ovaskainen, piano

Program:
Gioachino Rossini
Concerto for bassoon and orchestra
Allegro
Largo
Rondo

Gustav Schreck
Sonata for bassoon and piano in E flat major, Op. 9
Allegro ma non troppo
Largo
Allegro

Felix Mendelssohn
Song Without Words in D major, Op. 109

Biographies:
Milena Stanković earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Faculty of Music Arts in Belgrade, Serbia, under professor Mirko Isaeski. She was a winner of many first and special awards in both national and international competitions. Milena additionally specialized in performing by working with world – class bassoon artists such as: Volker Tessmann, Richard Galler, Henrik Rabien, Tomáš Františ, CarloColombo, Marc Engelhart, Fredrik Ekdahl, GiorgioMandolesi and Nikolaus Maler. She was awarded with Dositeja stipend for the beststudents in Serbia for both bachelor’s and masters’ degreestudents.
As a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, Milena has performed all around the country of Serbia, as well as at a number of festivals and concerts in Germany, Austria, Norway and France. She was holding a job of an associatemember of the Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra. In her accomplished concert career, Milena activelyperforms with orchestras, such as: Belgrade PhilharmonicOrchestra, RTS Symphony Orchestra, Opera & TheatreMadlenianum’s Orchestra, Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, Niš Symphony Orchestra, pera Orchestra of the NationalTheatre in Belgrade and Macedonian Philharmonic. With Niš Symphony Orchestra, she performed as a soloist three times.
Milena’s performance of Hummel’s Bassoon Concerto was featured in a CD publication of “Revija KlasičneMuzike” of Muzika Klasika. Milena was a jury member at the Serbian national competition in bassoon categories and a jury of many international competitions as well. Since 2017, Milena works as a bassoon professor at the Music School Stanković in Belgrade. Her students are very successful, and more than often win awards in national and international competitions. She worked also as a bassoon professor at the Music School Petar Konjović in Belgrade and since 2023 she works as a bassoon professor at the Music School Vatroslav Lisinski as well. She is currently pursuing specialist studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, under the professor Ivan Jotić.

Uki Ovaskainen studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, in Copenhagen with José Ribera and at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover with Professor Matti Raekallio. He has also worked with such renowned artists as Pnina Salzman, András Schiff, Emanuel Krasovsky, Charles Rosen, Yahli Wagman and Fou Ts’ong. He was the winner of the 1st prize, the special prize Contemporánea and the Audience Award at the Premio Jaén Piano Competition in Spain. He makes regular appearances as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, at festivals such as the Mariinsky Theatre’s International Piano Festival, the Hagen Open, the International Burgos Music Festival, the Mattsee Diabelli Sommer, the Weilburger Schlosskonzerte, Golden Days of Copenhagen and the PianoEspoo International Festival. He performed eight different solo recitals over the course of eleven days at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, which is the largest individual project ever presented at the Academy. Uki Ovaskainen has performed as a soloist with the Sjælland and Aalborg Symphony Orchestras among others, performed at the Konzerthaus in Vienna in chamber music concerts of the Wiener KammerOrchester, worked as a co-repetiteur for Opera Faber in Portugal, performed piano parts in professional orchestras in Denmark and in Serbia, worked with professional choirs and appeared at more than two hundred concerts on four continents as a member and pianist of the Tapiola Choir. He is the Artistic Organiser of the Uki Ovaskainen Chamber Tour in Denmark. As a mentor in the ArtLink organisation he has been working with chamber ensembles with and without piano, as well as with a string ensemble. He is an official accompanist at competitions organised by Jeunesses musicales in Belgrade. He works as an accompanist for strings at the Belgrade Faculty of Music, but places equal importance on performances with all-string and wind orchestras, as well as with singers.