CONCERT

excerpts It was in 1985 when a young woman who had applied for an emigration visa to West Europe and was not granted it was looking for a master of Oriental practices to get strength and self-protection. She was afraid she might be arrested, and her intention was to acquire,

In Romanian, Bucharest is a plural noun. This implies it is a multifaceted city, dazzling in its diversity. However, it is not a conglomerate of villages, of boroughs, like London or New York. There are not self-contained neighborhoods, each with its main street (High Street),

Architecture represents a means of interrogating history. Rather ominous, it is to be feared, when the question applies to the Romanian capital. Why so? The way Bucharest has been subjected to transformations in the last century accounts for the living changes affecting

In the heart of Romania's Capital stands the monumental building of the Romanian Athenaeum, the symbolic edifice of the most significant musical events ever since 1889 and, at the same time, the cradle of the International George Enescu Festival. There is no musical

When I was a child, and later, as a teenager, I circled around the Romanian Athenaeum without knowing what the edifice was good for. Then I began to think that it had been built for George Enescu… And when I first entered the concert hall, climbing one of its spiral staircases,

The Cries of BucharestCities have their own special humming. Church bells, tram noises, horses, sergeants' whistles, car horns (banned in Bucharest), dogs barking, army trumpets, and so on, and so on – all combined, heard from a distance, forming a characteristic

excerpts …Ada, as she had rightly reckoned, had indeed met Lica Troubadour. All she had to do was to get out of the car and mingle, at certain hours, in the life of the street. It was nearly impossible to stroll for a few days in a row on the famous Victoriei Avenue without

Ever since the mid-18th century, the city off the Dâmboviţa banks has enjoyed a particular sentimental popularity, not only from the point of view of its merry, party-loving, enterprising inhabitants, but also in the memory of tourists, who christened Romania's Capital

excerptsThe Beginnings With the passage of time the ancient road was called by sundry names: lane, bridge, promenade – as if it needed any name or title, this street of streets whose reign over the city goes back two hundred years. Victory Promenade! The Nation's

Almost no one in Vintileasa saw on TV the scene when the revolutionaries broke into the famous Studio 4 in the afternoon of 22 December 1989. The villagers were busy doing other, more important things. Some were killing their Christmas pigs. Others were stealing wood. Most

It was almost closing time. I guess you all know what a horrible time that is! The waiters are all in a hurry not to miss the last tram that leaves Balcescu Square at ten past one; they are therefore busily collecting the tablecloths while the customers are still eating,

It has been said – for good reason – that the Romanian word dor [aprox. yearning] is untranslatable, which made all foreign lexicographers leave it in its original form in most literary texts. But in music there is also a dor enescian [Enescian yearning], which someone