A 2011 Enescu Summer with Sun and Light – Gleaning through the Festival

This year's month of September was not only placed under the auspices of a late summer's sun but also under those of a music event of exceptional amplitude. Bucharest hosted for the 20^th time the George Enescu Festival, a mega music event irradiating on the entire territory of Romania, due to tours taken by internationally acclaimed artists to many cities in the country. The festival was launched in 1958; the most significant and important of Romanian composers had died only three years before in exile in Paris.

An event initially created for communist propaganda, it grew in time into the most reputed event in Romania, especially after the 1989 Revolution. The 20^th edition in the festival was proof to this accomplishment. Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle, the London Symphony Orchestra, Valery Gergiev and Mariinsky Orchestra, Saint Martin in the Fields, Lawrence Foster and Gulbenkian Orchestra, die Wiener Philharmoniker with Welser-Möst, Zubin Metha and Israel Philharmonic Orchester, Trevor Pinnock and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Orchestre National de France and Daniele Gatti are only few of the names in the festival's programme. They are completed by opera titles: “Oedipe” by Enescu, certainly, as well as “Romeo and Juliet” by Berlioz, “Eugene Onegin” and “Magifique” by Tchaikovsky – and oratories, and an incredible selection of chamber baroque music, presented by first rate musical ensembles, as music criticist Reinhard Eschenbach noted in Berlin Orpheus-Musikmagazin. I wish the organisers that the festival gets a better international exposure. Artistically, the event is undoubtedly at the level of the most prestigious Western Europe festivals, continuers Eschenbach. Not to mention the “house” orchestra, that of the National Opera, worthy of all praise for its precision, sense of sound and differentiating!

90 years after George Enescu conducted the premiere of “Lohengrin” in Bucharest, the opera was the festival's guest. A ticket sales success, just like the only opera by Enescu, “Oedipe”. The National Chile Ballet attracted a number of spectators exceeding the capacity of the hall. (Choreographer Gigi Căciuleanu is one of the many Romanian artist – conductors and soloists included – who have left Romania and whom the Enescu Festival brings back home, as the audience is faithful to Romanian artists, as noted by journalist Buris Gruhl from Dresden.) Căciuleanu presented the creation “Noche Bach“, staged together with his company from Chile, comprised on 22 members. The first part was staged on the Brandenburg Concertos No. 5 and 3, and the second part on Bach's cantata “Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring”. It was especially young people who came to this performance, and the two choreographies by Balanchine, as well as the production “Falling Angels”, sensationally interpreted by the ballet ensemble of the Romanian National Opera. They opened the audience's appetite for the rest of the events in the festival.

Extraordinary concerts – beginning at 5 p.m. in the fantastic atmosphere of the Athenaeum, and were continued in the early evening at the Palace Hall or the Radio Hall and ended late at night in the Athenaeum's Rotunda – made up this year's festival programme, with a wide musical range, from Enescu's compositions, to contemporary and classical music Romanian compositions.

They pointed out in the opening of the festival the relevance of this cultural event in the financial crisis years. The director of the Romanian Cultural Institute, Horia-Roman Patapievici, stressed that intelligent people and institutions invest in culture in times of crisis, as it is the best way to prepare for reconstruction after recession..., reported Medana Weident and Radio Deutsche Welle, one of the media partners of the festival. Furthermore, generous sponsorship supported the festival's director, Mihai Constantinescu, to turn the jubilee edition of the Enescu Festival into one of the major music event in 2011's Europe. “We're already working on the 2013 edition in the festival and we're not only looking to preserve the level of the event, but also to raise the artistic goalpost.” All the best with that!