Step into the fascinating world of improvisation on every Saturday and Sunday by listening to Jazz Collection, a programme which aims to offer amazing recordings to ardent collectors and fans, but also to help people less familiar to jazz develop an appetite for this type of music.

The guest on this week's editionswill be Marius Popp - born in Sibiu on 21 September 1935 - pianist, composer, band leader, arranger, jazz teacher.

His experience as jazzman is reflected not only in his work, in interpreting themes or leading the band, but also in training young jazz musicians. Many Romanian jazzmen, who now are asked to hold concerts in and outside the country, have been his pupils. We can honestly say that Marius Popp has been the founder of the jazz school in Romania, continuing the tradition established years ago by Edmond Deda.

The history of the Romanian jazz from the end of the '60s until the present day told with charisma, honesty and wisdom by Marius Popp, only on Jazz Collection. The broadcast will include recordings Marius Popp and his bands have done starting with the 70s and up until today.

You will definitely be drawn by the mysteries of music improvisation and want to learn more about our greatest jazz musicians. We invite you to join us on every Saturday and Sunday and if you happen to miss the live broadcast, you can access the online archive and listen to the programme.

'If I rest, I rust...'

It was yet another An Evening at the Opera, and yet another winter - except it was the 29^th of December 2007 - when we started the series called The Galas Plácido Domingo. At that time, Domingo was celebrated at Staatsoper in Vienna and I began my programme with a quote from an article which could probably be written in the same terms today:

'No Anna Netrebko and no Rolando Villazón have managed to create such sensation in Vienna this year, as Plácido Domingo did. He is and will be for many years from now (immer noch der Grösste!) the greatest!' (Salzburger Nachrichten)

Now we are at the fourth Gala (the second one was at the MET, and the third one in Barcelona) and to the 124 roles that were initially in Domingo's 2007 repertoire, today, with the occasion of the broadcast of the Gala from the Covent Garden Royal Opera in London, we add to our auditory memoire his most recent roles, the ones of baritone, Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra; because, even though he turned seventy-one just last week (on the 21^st of January), celebrating his birthday on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, singing in his new production called The Enchanted Island, broadcast live on An Evening at the Opera - the great Domingo cannot help himself from learning new roles (changing even his vocal compass), from conducting, from taking part in any musical event.

Why?

Because, he says, 'if I rest, I rust...'

Thus, you will relisten to Domingo singing, even at seventy years old, in the Gala organised for him by the Covent Garden in London, last year, in a rebroadcast only on An Evening at the Opera!

Bonus: declarations from Domingo, as well as from maestro Antonio Pappano, (the musical director of the theatre) given for this occasion, live on Radio Romania.