This portrait of the Serbian composer Marko Nikodijević presents three large orchestral works, each looking back to the past in its own way. Some tie into musical or cultural traditions, others into personal memories. The music is played by two radio orchestras, the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Nikodijević was born in Subotica on 4 January 1980. He studied composition in Belgrade with Zoran Erić and Srdjan Hofman, alongside mathematics and nonlinear physics, and then with Marco Stroppa in Stuttgart. He won the Gaudeamus Prize in 2010 and a prize of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 2013. Absolutio is performed by the Frankfurt orchestra under Jonathan Stockhammer, who also conducts the Berlin orchestra in Abgesang with the soprano Anna Sohn. da ispravitsja / Gebetsraum mit Nachtwache is conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with Jakub Sawicki at the organ. The first recording is a production of Hessischer Rundfunk. The other two are coproductions of Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the German Music Council, the second also with the Rundfunk Orchester und Chöre Berlin.

Like most of Nikodijević's works, Absolutio (2016), subtitled Postludium for orchestra, grows from a simple but strict formal principle, here a three-note chord. From it rises a spiralling, whirling construction with an ever stronger gravitational pull and the distant outlines of a sonata form. The Alte Oper Frankfurt commissioned it, and the Frankfurt orchestra gave the first performance under Juraj Valčuha on 30 September 2016. Abgesang (2015-17), a song for soprano and orchestra, has close personal ties to the composer's past. It sets a symmetrically built poem by his former piano teacher Mátyás Molcer, describing a cemetery landscape in autumn. The poem dates from 1995, when the composer's homeland, the former Yugoslavia, was in civil war. Anna Sohn sang the first performance in Berlin on 19 January 2019.

In da ispravitsja / Gebetsraum mit Nachtwache (prayer room with night vigil), for orchestra with obbligato organ, Nikodijević reaches further back in memory. He turns to the cultural heritage of his homeland, the music and liturgy of the Serbian Orthodox church. With means inspired by electronic music, such as reverberation, resonance and echo, he builds a dark acoustic space that resembles a church. Commissioned by the Berlin orchestra and dedicated to Jurowski, it was written in 2019 and first performed under him on 17 January 2020.

CD, Wergo WER 6442 2, released in 2023 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik.