Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Letter from Bucharest

by
ABR Arts 12 September 2019

Letter from Bucharest

by
ABR Arts 12 September 2019

If one were to ask the average classical music lover to guess where, in the space of three weeks, she could hear orchestras of the calibre of the Berlin Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Dresden Staatskapelle, and the Royal Concertgebouw, and artists of the eminence of Joyce Di Donato, Yuja Wang, Evgeny Kissin, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Iestin Davies, Bryn Terfel, Gidon Kramer, Midori, and Mitsuko Uchida, and if one could explain to her that that formidable list only barely scratched the surface of what was available to be experienced, the chances are she would plump for the Proms, followed perhaps by Salzburg or Edinburgh. She would be unlikely to guess the Enescu Music Festival in Bucharest for the simple reason that she would probably be completely unaware of its existence.

And yet the Enescu Festival, named after Romania’s pre-eminent composer, George Enescu, has been in existence since 1958. Like most artistic institutions, it has had its ups and downs, but at the moment – in the capable hands of artistic director Vladimir Jurowski and the suave Mihai Constantinescu, who has been its CEO for thirty years and has survived thirty ministers of culture – it is one of the wonders of the musical world.

From the New Issue

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.