The Enescu Festival

The George Enescu International Festival, which started on September 1st, ended on Saturday. Approximately 3,000 foreign artists came to Bucharest to attend the prestigious event, joining the another 1,500 Romanian ones. There were 78 concerts and shows i

Roxana Vasile, 30.09.2013, 15:04

After 28 days of concerts, recitals and events, many of them exceptional, the most important festival in Romania closed its gates on Saturday evening in Bucharest. Standing ovations marked the end of the 21st George Enescu Festival, after the US-born pianist Murray Perahia gave an extraordinary recital with works by Bach, Beethoven, Schumann and Chopin, and at the Palace Hall the London Royal Orchestra and conductor Cristian Mandeal enchanted the audience with works by Enescu and Mahler.

This year’s edition, characterized by superlatives, brought to Bucharest famous ensembles such as Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, the Santa Cecilia Academic Orchestra, Berlin Staatskapelle or Saint Martin in the Fields from England. Also, the festival marked the return on the Romanian stage of Radu Lupu, seen as one of the world’s greatest pianists.

It was a glorious display of piano and violin virtuosos and a great opportunity to meet some of the festival’s most faithful friends. 2013 is the Wagner year, so the George Enescu Festival occasioned a first in Romania, the Ring of the Nibelung. Also, the famous American actor John Malkovich was part of the cast of the Baroque opera “the Infernal Comedy”.

The success of the festival was largely rendered by the audience: over 120 thousand tickets sold, of which 20 thousand abroad.

Mihai Constantinescu, the director of the agency that organizes the festival, said: “It was a long and difficult edition. It’s not only us, the organizers, who are extremely satisfied with this edition, but also those who went to concerts or watched them on the internet, on TV or radio. I believe it was a success. The audience was extraordinary, there were many young people, many foreigners in the concert halls. We thank all those who came to the concerts, who enjoyed the music and whom we see as supporters of the festival, people that we can definitely count on at the next editions as well.”

Radio Romania has been a co-producer of the George Enescu festival ever since its first edition, 55 years ago. This year, our radio station had 63 live broadcasts, and produced many reports and interviews.

Romanian Minister of Culture, Daniel Barbu: “Radio Romania has had a major contribution to this event, and we hope it will be like this in the future as well, because this is a way of gaining a much larger audience than we can bring to our concert halls. I think this year’s edition has been a truly memorable one, and we are already working on the next one. We know exactly that it will start on August 29th, 2015, with Berliner Philarmoniker.”