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Music festival to showcase more modern works
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ONE of Europe’s biggest classical music festivals, held in Romania’s capital city of Bucharest, is promising to showcase contemporary composers and performers from central and eastern Europe in the future.
The George Enescu Festival will see pianist Martha Argerich, violinists Joshua Bell, David Garrett and Maxim Vengerov, conductors Antonio Pappano and Zubin Mehta as well as orchestras from Milan’s La Scala and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw. It will also debut a section dedicated to 21st century composers, at the urging of Vladimir Jurowski, principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Enescu’s new artistic director.
“There are generally more contemporary works performed in this festival than in any of the previous ones,” Jurowski said. “Without the music of the present there is no future.”
Jurowski also said future editions will strive to include more Romanian, Russian, Ukraininan, Czech, Serbian or Croatian musicians to promote the region’s cultural heritage.
One problem plaguing festival organizers is the lack of a proper concert hall. Orchestras perform in the 4,000-seat Sala Palatului hall which was built in 1960 for Communist Party meetings and has poor acoustics. Successive governments, which provide the bulk of the festival’s budget, have so far not made good on promises to replace it.
“We’re talking about one of the most important music festivals in the world,” Jurowski said. “You need to build a big concert hall, also because it will propel forward Romania’s cultural life outside the festival.”
Until then, the festival’s enthusiastic public will have to make do.
“I come to the festival because I love Enescu. He is a representative for Romania, an international music force and he is beginning to be appreciated in the world,” said 68-year-old pensioner Sanda Nicolae. “When our soul hurts, we find ourselves in his music.”
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