The RadiRo Festival comes to an end
Another high-profile cultural event organized by Radio Romania has come to an end in Bucharest
Bogdan Matei, 26.11.2018, 12:36
On Sunday evening, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra of the Irish public radio and television broadcaster conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann gave the closing performance of the RadiRo Festival of Radio Orchestras. Organised every two years by Radio Romania and now in its fourth year, this is the only event of its kind for radio orchestras.
This years edition was also meant to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the public stations first ever broadcast and the Centenary of the Great Union. For a week, the public had the chance to see eight symphonic concerts and, as a first, also four jazz concerts. The participants included leading international orchestras, conductors and musicians. The festival opened with a performance from the oldest radio orchestra in Europe, that of Leipzig, in Germany.
The line-up also featured the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the orchestra of the Italian-language radio and television broadcaster in Lugano, Switzerland. All concerts were broadcast live by Radio Romania and recorded by the Romanian Television and will be rebroadcast by other stations that are members of the European Broadcasting Union.
Some of the foreign musicians who took to the stage this year were not for the first time in Romania, such as the Australian violinist Ray Chan, who was also in Bucharest for the George Enescu Festival last year. He praised the warm and enthusiastic response of the Romanian public, saying the energy of the public is important for musicians, helping them give a successful performance. Speaking of people returning to Romania, the festivals jazz section featured the Romanian-born jazz singer Aura Urziceanu, who is back on a stage in her native country after many years. She used to be very popular in Romania a few decades ago, when she still lived here, before emigrating to the US.
The reception she got from the RadiRo public was more than enthusiastic:
“She still has the same voice, she hasnt changed. If anything, shes become better.
“I didnt think I would ever see Aura Urziceanu in a live concert. Ive known her since I was a child, but Ive never seen her perform live before.
“Ive never seen anything like it: improvisation, professionalism…
A week ago, music had taken the baton over from literature in a marathon of cultural events organised by Radio Romania. In mid November, the biggest exhibition venue in Bucharest hosted the 25th edition of the Gaudeamus International Book Fair. This years theme was, unsurprisingly, the Romanian Centenary.
In this context, the fair granted excellence awards to a number of publishing houses from the neighbouring Republic of Moldova (an ex-Soviet state with a majority Romanian-speaking population) and from the Romanian city of Cluj Napoca (located in the north-west and the biggest in Transylvania) for what the organisers called “their admirable national editorial activity in the year of the Centenary of the Great Union. (Translated by C. Mateescu)
