Georges Enescu Festival

One of our main reasons for going to Bucharest at this time was to go to the Georges Enescu Festival, which is a three week classical music festival featuring an astonishing number of high quality concerts.   The festival brings in orchestras from all over the world, including the London Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Russian National Orchestra, etc.    As well as the predictable line-up of classical music star soloists.   There are usually four concerts a day.   The programming, for the most part, is the same old repertoire, with the notable exception of a focus on the work of Enescu.   The major event for us was to hear Enescu's opera "Oedipe" in a concert performance.   It is a truly extraordinary work, and is rarely done.   It should be recognized as one of the major works of 20th century opera; but it has never been done by the Metropolitan Opera as far as I know.  The performance was spellbinding.   Enescu's musical language is something quite original; it is relatively consonant and tonal, and yet the music moves in ways that always seem original and unexpected.  He uses folk music elements along with some traditional avant-garde devices, but it all sounds coherent.  It is however, quite dense, which perhaps explains the fact that the music is not more popular.   We also heard some other Enescu works in the festival that were excellent; but I'm afraid that Enescu has fallen into that black hole of classical music categories, the composer known for one particular work (Romanian Rhapsody) which ends up being the only work that is ever played.

The festival is a very popular event, and many concerts sell out.  Unfortunately, the only venue for large scale orchestral concerts is a very large hall seating 4,000 people, built during the Communist era as a place for party meetings. etc.   While the sound is full and present, many other details get lost, particularly with soloists.  When you hear the Prokofiev 3rd Piano Concerto and you can't hear the soloist very well, that's not good.   The same was true for the Berg Violin Concerto, where the soloist was frequently inaudible.

Bucharest does have a wonderful smaller concert hall, the Romanian Atheneum, which seats 900 and is a visual wonder.  Elaborately decorated, the auditorium is in a circular shape.   We heard string octets there, but the sound was too reverberant for my taste.

Because the festival is a popular event, you see behavior that you might not see, say, in Vienna.   Cell phones are frequently in use, and people come and go.   But I'm happy they are there, and I just close my eyes.....