Kolarac Concert Hall to Be Renovated in Summer 2027
After the Za Kolarac benefit concert, endowment director Aleksandar Pekovic confirmed the concert hall will be renovated next summer, for the first time in 63 years.
On Sunday, October 11, the Belgrade Chamber Orchestra played on the main stage of the Kolarac Endowment, joined by soprano Branislava Podrumac, with all ticket revenue going toward restoring the building that hosted it. The concert came with news that matters more to the audience than the program: endowment director Aleksandar Pekovic confirmed that the concert hall will be renovated next summer.
What is known about the Kolarac renovation?
Pekovic told RTS that the restoration has been going on for two years, and that the last renovation was a long time ago:
“The Kolarac Endowment began the renovation two years ago. You know that 63 years have passed since the last renovation.”
The hall has a deadline of next year. “Next year, during the summer, the hall will be renovated. That is the first phase of the renovation, that is, the upgrading of the concert hall,” Pekovic said. The statements published so far do not say how long the work will last or what it will cost.
Who played, and what was heard?
The concert was called Za Kolarac (For Kolarac). According to the announcement, it began at 4 p.m., and the program included Mozart, tango, film music and orchestral arrangements of 1980s pop hits, among them songs by Whitney Houston. Kolarac itself was the organizer, under the patronage of the Nezaboravak humanitarian society.
Podrumac graduated in solo singing from the Faculty of Music Arts in Belgrade, in the class of Radmila Smiljanic. She made her opera debut in 2003 in the title role of Puccini’s “Suor Angelica”, and won a UMUS award for her part in the musical “Rebecca”.
Miljana Popovic, founder of the Belgrade Chamber Orchestra, described the preparation for RTS: “We prepared spontaneously, the program is very interesting, but we did not pander to the audience.” Violinist Vanja Nitel spoke about what the building means to those who perform in it:
“Kolarac is the center of events for us musicians, and I think that if there were no Kolarac, there would be no first-rate musicians either.”
A building within a building, 300 concerts a year
Kolarac officially opened in 1932, and its hall was built on the building-within-a-building principle. It hosts more than 300 concerts a year, along with educational programs.
The two sources this article draws on do not say how much money the concert raised or what tickets cost. For now, only what the director said is known: the restoration has run for two years, 63 years have passed since the last one, and the hall’s turn comes next summer.
