The George Enescu International Festival and the Bucharest Municipality Museum (BMM) are officially launching a partnership meant to extend the interaction between the Festival and the city and to diversify the festival experience for the public.
The first event to take place under the aegis of this partnership is the exhibition “Music at home – How we banish boredom” – an illustrated history of music in the life of Romanians, starting with the 19th century until today. The exhibition will open for visitors at the Suțu Palace (2 I.C. Brătianu Street) on July 15 and will represent a thematic preview of the George Enescu International Festival 2019.
This exhibitional project is part of a series of innitiatives through which museums, institutions, galleries and different organizations in Bucharest are developing music projects in collaboration with the George Enescu International Festival in order to extend its interaction with the city and to diversify the public’s experience of the festival.
“A museum is a cultural projection of a community. It is, therefore, natural for us to want to integrate among our projects an intense musical event such as the George Enescu International Festival. As a preview of the musical feast which will take place in the concert halls, our exhibition will welcome the public to see how music appeared in the life of Romanians and how listening to music evolved in time, from an experience initially reserved for the urban elite, to an experience generally accessible through technology” said Adrian Majuru, Manager of the Bucharest Municipality Museum.
As part of “Music at home – How we banish boredom”, the visitors can see objects which illustrate the way Romanians listened to music starting with 1830, when encounter with this type of art happened, most often, indoors, in the restricted space of the urban aristocracy.
Then follows a general view of the end of the 19th century and the inter-war period, very fertile for the Romanians’ relationship with music, when great future musicians, such as Ciprian Porumbescu or George Enescu, received musical instruments as gifts in their childhood. In the Romanian cities music was highly appreciated and music gathered the elite into orchestras of medics, engineers or lawyers.
After 1947, the communist regime stigmatized music as being a bourgeois practice. The appearance of technology democratized access to music, but it favors the practice of listening to music rather than practicing it.
The exhibition will include halls where the visitors can find out details about the technology used for listening to music and will see radios and old posters of some popular concerts of the time. One of the halls will be dedicated to the 19th century and will give visitors the unique chance to listen music, for example gramophone music, under the supervision of a museologist. In the hall dedicated to the 20th century, visitors will be able to listen to pick-up music, vinyl disks, or tape recorders.
The exhibition “Music at home – How we banish boredom” will be accessible to the public all throughout the festival duration, and it is a good opportunity to extend the experience of music beyond the walls of concert halls.
“The George Enescu Festival is a major world music event, thus one especially important for Bucharest, and we want to connect the city and the public as much as possible to this wonderful experience of encountering the great classical scene of the world. We were met with openness and enthusiasm by our partners and we hope that these initiative will be the beginning of a long term common construction which will benefit the public, first and foremost”, said Mihai Constantinescu, director of the George Enescu International Festival.
About the George Enescu International Festival
Now on its 24th edition, the George Enescu International Festival will take place between August 31st and September 22nd 2019. The concert halls in Bucharest will host the performance of 2 500 of the most valuable musicians in the world, coming from 50 countries and playing in 84 concerts and recitals. This year’s edition sums up 34 premiers in Romania: 25 artists, among whom Marion Cotillard, Kiril Petrenko, Mitsuko Uchido and nine world class orchestras.
The 2019 edition of the Enescu Festival awaits its public at Sala Palatului (the Palace Hall), Ateneul Roman (the Romanian Atheneum), Sala Radio (the Radio Hall) and Sala Mică a Palatului (the Palace’s Small Hall) to attend concerts and recitals grouped in six big categories: „World’s Greatest Orchestras”, „The Midnight Concerts”, „Chamber Recitals and Concerts”, „21st Century Music”, „Mozart Week in Residence” and „The Composers’ International Forum”. Also, there will be concerts and events in the Festival’s Square, conferences, albums and book launches and extraordinary shows.
For more details please visit: www.festivalenescu.ro and www.muzeulbucurestiului.ro