Dialogue With Composer Theodor Grigoriu About Ionel Perlea
Mihaela Marinescu: Did you know maestro Ionel Perlea before visiting him in New York in 1967?Theodor Grigoriu: No, I didn't, he had left the country a long time before. He was a legend to my generation, like Enescu, like Lipatti. Before my trip to the United States
The Conductor
The Romanian realm has given great creating spirits to the world, in all fields of activity: philosophers, historians, sociologists, scientists that made epoch-making discoveries, inventors, writers (poets, prose writers, and dramatists), brilliant musicians, painters, and
A Hero Without His Right Wing
Far from his country, across the ocean, in 1957, while he conducted Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in New York, conductor Ionel Perlea had a heart attack. He had the courage and most of all the strength to go on conducting until he finished the Ode to Joy, after which he
Echoes
Aida, March 17, 1920. I waited for it. With the justifiable, feverish impatience you feel before an ideal dream comes true!, wrote the Rampa magazine on March 18, 1920, hailing the opening of the first lyrical season. People liked the cheap, but very beautiful stage design,
Three Romanian Conducting Maestros In One
Of all the great 20th century conductors, Egizio Massini was the only one who distinguished himself equally in three different fields (opera, symphonic music, and fanfare). Even if he made tours abroad conducting all threes types of music, opera was the genre that distinguished
Echoes
On 20 November 1921 an enthusiastic letter written by the poet Cincinat Pavelescu is published in Rampa, a letter which we see fit to transcribe in full: Dear Mr. Editor in Chief, My life's absorbing activities of incessant work at the head of a newspaper without any
The Lord Of Romanian Conducting
After almost a century of symphonic music in Romania (as early as in 1846-1848, the first symphonic concerts changed the artistic life of Bucharest), after three quarters of a century since the establishment of the first philharmonic in Bucharest (1868), a magician appeared
A Portrait In Smithereens
At night, when sleep is slow to come in a somewhat strange bed, you listen tensely to any sort of noise and try to decode the shades momentarily cast by car lights on the white of the walls. That is how I realized she was there, waiting on the threshold of the door. You
Echoes: Excerpts From The Farewell Concert
In an obituary published in the Tages Anzeiger of Zurich, Mario Gerteis draws a suggestive portrait of Celibidache in his youth. A nervous fiery ball, halfway between histrionics and insight, between passion and obsession. His dark locks hanging over his face in disorder,
The Romanian School Of Conductors
It is no secret to anyone that in Romania every person who has a good voice and musical talent has sung at least once, in his or her youth, in a choir. People say about Banat, the western region on the boundary with Hungary and Yugoslavia that it is the land of choirs, because
Inner Nature
Corneliu MICHAILESCU (Bucharest, 1887-Bucharest, 1965) is one of the less known Romanian avant-garde artists, with a particular although somehow exemplar creative itinerary. Despite his relatively long life and apparently static development, he is one of the rare Romanian
Traditional And Modern
Showing the electors' arrival in Frankfurt due to the crowning of Joseph II as King of Rome, Goethe mentions the fact that among the most obedient and distinguished personalities some had ridden to Frankfurt according to the old traditional custom, while others had