/View.info/ The new, 25th edition of the Bucharest festival founded in 1958, named after a classic of Romanian and world music, the composer, violinist and conductor George Enescu/ 1881-1955/, with honorary president, the eminent Zubin Meta, truly respects both with the volume of its performances – 80 symphonic and chamber concerts and 8 concert performances of operas in 4 halls / this was the number of them only in Bucharest for these three weeks / 31 August – 22 September / as well as with the number and level to its participants. And it was extraordinary. 2500 musicians from 50 countries from Europe, Asia and America.
I would say that this high-budget festival definitely surpasses in its scale most of the largest similar forums in the world, incl. those of Paris, Athens, Berlin, Salzburg, Munich. In our northern neighbor, which is not at all in an economic boom, there are no gypsies when it comes to culture, and high value culture at that, not to pop, rock, jazz and chalga, which have recently flooded Bulgaria and they reached the big orchestras and halls. There are no “reforms”, there are no absurd “delegated budgets” invented by our ignorant rulers from GERB, there are no closed orchestras and theaters, “open stages” and destitute, humiliated singers and musicians with salaries already lower than street cleaners!
And this year, the number of orchestras reached a record number of 20, with 10 of them designated by the organizers in the program as “big”. / Here I will open a parenthesis: A few years ago, our failed, due to the state’s fault, “Sofia Weeks” / invited Freni, Carreras, Sergio Celebidake and Karayan years ago!/, could not even pay the travel and hotel fees of the nearest the capital Philharmonic of Plovdiv, which, alas, has already been shortened after the destructive “cultural” reform of GERB!/. In addition to the host orchestras / Bucharest Philharmonic “Enescu” and the Radio Orchestra, the philharmonics of Cluj, Iași and Timişoara, / unlike those of Ruse, Plovdiv and Varna – unabridged!/, the choirs of the Radio, the Conservatory and the well-known “Madrigal” in our country, and also the philharmonics of Cluj, Sibiu, Iași and Timişoara/, in the poster we read the names of: the Philharmonic of St. Petersburg, that of Oslo, the orchestras of Radio Berlin and Radio Warsaw, the Concertgebouw, Holland, the Dresden State Chapel, the National Orchestras of Paris and Lille, France, Yevgeny Svetlanov Orchestra, Moscow. Monte Carlo Philharmonics, Radio Vienna Orchestra, National Philharmonic of Moldova, Royal Philharmonic of Liège, Belgium…
The number of elite chamber formations was also large – quartets, trios, quintets, chamber music. Among them I will mention “Europa Galante” by Mario Biondi from Italy, known to us from the “Days of March” the Kremerata Baltica, the Cameratistas from La Scala, Camerata Regala, Bucharest, Gran Capello, Madrid, Academia Bizantina, Camerata Basel with a concert performance of Mozart’s “Don Juan”. This year the festival offered as many as 8 concert performances of lesser-known and staged operas from the Baroque era and from the 20th century by authors such as Gluck, Handel, Monteverdi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, as well as Beethoven, Richard Strauss and Béla Bartok. Something that almost does not happen at other major world music forums.
A new moment is the “Enescu Festival around the world” program. In eight premiere concerts, the music of the great Romanian was mainly performed by foreign orchestras, conductors and soloists in: London, Berlin, Toronto in distant Canada /!/, Florence, Dresden and Chisinau. Well, that’s called presenting native music to the world! Truly, a unique idea…Years ago, on our March Days in Ruse, every foreign orchestra performed at least one Bulgarian piece. In fact, the program of most symphony and chamber concerts includes works by Enescu, and this fully justifies the name of the festival.
The interesting thing this year was that continued the successful new idea of the festival organizers to take it out of the capital and into the country – this time in 27 cities /!/ of Romania, and not all of them are the biggest, so that the audience from all over Romania can take part in this incredible, large-scale celebration of Euterpa. Something that we, in Bulgaria, which is already completely under the sign of sofiocentrism, can only dream about. But the authorities there do not believe that everything should be concentrated in the capital, and the rest of the country should be damaged, as it has been for ten years in our country!
The number of first-rate soloists reached 60. There were a number of world names. Several superstars of modern opera gave solo chamber concerts: coloratura soprano Diana Damrau, Germany’s first female singer (by the way, a Romanian graduate), Paris tenor Rolando Villazon, American mezzo-soprano Joyce Di Donato, Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel…
The virtuoso violinists, cellists and pianists of the rank of Julia Fischer, Elizaveta Leonskaya, Yuja Wong, Michaela Martin and Yevgeny Kissin predominated. Among them was our compatriot, the laureate of the “Enescu” competition, the pianist Viktoria Vasilenko from Sofia, and this was the only Bulgarian participation in this most prestigious world forum of great music.
The list of conductors is really interesting: artistic director Vladimir Jurovski since 2006 head of the London Philharmonic, Gidon Kremer, Maris Jansons, Maxim Vengerov, Gianandrea Noseda, Christian Mandyal, Fabio Lewis, Kirill Petrenko, Lawrence Foster, Horia Andreescu, Fabio Biondi, Antonio Pappano, Yuri Temirkanov, Mun- Vyun Chung, Ion Marin, Valery Gergiev… The list was long.
There were four halls. The most famous Athenaeum, round, baroque, with magnificent architecture, incredibly beautiful, with perfect acoustics, with more than 1000 seats, built in 1888 with a national subscription under the caption: “Give one lei to the Athenaeum!”. Few people know that among the big donors is the famous Bulgarian Evlogi Georgiev, who gave 200,000 golden lei for its construction. The big world orchestras perform their programs in The Great Hall of the Palace /Bucharest NDK/, built in the late 1960s, with 4,000 seats. The third hall is on The radio / 1000 seats/, the fourth on The Music Academy. Since several editions, the Municipality of Bucharest has also held some of the concerts in the open air – on the George Enescu Square / in front of the Athenaeum and the Royal Palace, now an art gallery/, and they have free entrance. In Romania, entry ticket taxes were recently drastically reduced from 20 to 5 percent, while in our country….We don’t have any tax breaks. Our budget for culture is more than insulting, the virtuoso musicians from “Sofia Soloists” are paid as much as street sweepers / and soon a musical European Bulgaria will be left without instrumentalists and singers!/, we also need a new concert hall in the capital, and the operas of Plovdiv and Varna are without buildings and their own stages, but on the other hand there are the unnecessary expensive and ugly concrete arenas of B.B.
It is unnecessary to talk about the program. From the oldest music, through all eras and styles, to today’s authors. In fact, the festival has four directions: “Large Orchestras”, “Chamber Music”, “Contemporary Music”, “Midnight Music”. Within the framework of the festival there were many exhibitions, premieres and a unique symposium to which significant names of composers from all over the world were invited. Foreign musicians and orchestras included in their programs at least one of Enescu’s works as an expression of respect to the great musician and to this truly incredible forum of great music. A festival worthy of “Guinness”, of which our northern neighbor and its leaders are rightly proud. And ours? B.B. does not know where to enter the National Opera and the “Bulgaria” hall, while the Romanian ministers and MPs buy their tickets early and know the Bucharest halls…
P.P. And the national radio, which /in contrast to our “staged BNR/ for nearly 30 years there is also a separate 24-hour broadcast channel for artisttraditional music, records or broadcasts live the entire festival on Binsmoker-2 and Radio “George Enescu”…
* The beautiful acoustic hall of the Athenaeum was the first home of the Enescu Festival, founded in 1958
#festival #Enescu #Festival #turned #worlds #favorite #among #big #festivals
