Урош Лайович

Hans Swarowsky's Vienna class completed the education Uroš Lajovic had begun in Ljubljana as a composer — the degree in 1967, the conducting diploma in 1969, student Prešeren prizes in both years — and he graduated with honours in 1971, having earlier worked with Bruno Maderna in Salzburg. He was assistant and then permanent conductor of the Slovenian Philharmonic across two decades, led the RTV Slovenia chamber orchestra and the Croatian Radio and Television Symphony, founded the chamber orchestra Slovenicum in 1988, and was chief conductor of the Belgrade Philharmonic in the early 2000s. Some eighty works received their first performance from him. From 1989 he taught conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, holding the chair from 1991 until his retirement in 2012, and afterwards taught in Zagreb; Austria awarded him its Cross of Honour for Science and Art in 2013. Among the conductors formed in his Vienna class are Kirill Petrenko, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Alan Buribayev and Nayden Todorov. He was born in Ljubljana in 1944 and studied with Bruno Maderna at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1968 and 1969. From 1979 to 1991 he was principal conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic, and his guest engagements have taken in the Munich and Dresden Philharmonics, the Berlin Radio Symphony, the Vienna Symphony, the National Orchestra of Belgium and orchestras in Seoul, Tokyo and Taipei, with masterclasses in Vilnius, Konstanz, Zagreb, Shanghai and Hong Kong. More than ninety orchestras and some fifteen hundred concerts stand behind the career.