If you have ever seen one of the films by Emir Kusturica, for example Arizona Dream or Underground, then you will have heard film music orchestrated by Goran Bregovic and music written by one of Serbia’s most interesting female composers, Isidora Zebeljan.

The well-known opera director David Pountney once wrote of Zebeljan’s entry to an opera composition competition: “Her music moved me in its absolute subversion of that which one might term ‘academic modernity,’ very direct in its freshness, originality, and emotional expressivity.” A selection of her orchestral works, inspired by the folk music of the Balkans and Byzantine art are conducted under David Porcelijn.