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ORF RSO Wien
Alessandro Baticci / Mirela Ivičević / Liavon Schwir

Concert

Large orchestra with musicians in formal attire on a stage in a concert hall

Photo: Hans Leitner

The musician Maria Kalesnikava is a central figure in the resistance against Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. She spent over five years in prison, partly in solitary confinement. ORF musikprotokoll and the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz drew attention to the prisoner’s plight through joint events; in 2023, she received an honorary doctorate. Her flute, placed on stage, made Kalesnikava’s absence painfully palpable.

In 2024, soprano Viktoriia Vitrenko dedicated a recital to Kalesnikava at ORF musikprotokoll. Following Kalesnikava’s release in late 2025, the two women took the stage together: Accompanied by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (ORF RSO Wien) under Lin Liao, they performed the world premiere of a double concerto by Liavon Schwir.

Kalesnikava has become an icon of the freedom movement. Alessandro Baticci reflects on such mechanisms in Genesis of an Icon. Mirela Ivičević, too, works with powerful symbols in Red Thread Mermaid and incorporates songs from the former Yugoslav region. She dedicates the work to “all fellow outsiders in today’s discouragingly fascist world.”

The compositions by Alessandro Baticci and Mirela Ivičević are commissions of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), curated by ten public broadcasters—including ORF musikprotokoll—and exclusively reserved for their orchestras.
The composition by Liavon Schwir is a commission of ORF musikprotokoll.
With the kind support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation