On Friday, 19^th April, 2013, I attended a new Musical Soirée at the Lutheran Church. The project's second edition featured two chamber music ensembles. The first of them - a duo made up of cellists Ella Bokor and Mircea Marian. The programme, which was appropriate for the venue, included Baroque works (Jean-Baptiste Barrière's Sonata for Two Cellos in G major, Jacques Offenbach's Duo for Two Cellos op. 53 no. 2), as well as a Romantic work - Suite for Two Cellos op. 16 by David Popper.

Why were these particular works chosen? Ella Bokor gives us the answer:

'We thought Baroque goes well with such a concert hall. This genre has always sounded very well in church. We also thought to pick a Romantic; and Popper is important, as he was a cellist and he composed music for two cellos. Unfortunately, there are very few composers who have written such a beautiful and complex programme for two cellos during Romanticism and later on.'

The second part of the evening featured a novel group on the stage of the Lutheran Church - Dumitrana Gabriel, Magor Szasz, Victor Savca and Andrei Cerevkoff as a quartet of double basses, a rare ensemble to be seen on a Romanian stage. The arrangement of the works they performed was also surprising - they flowed from Johann Sebastain Bach or Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to Scott Joplin.

Magor Szasz gives us more details about the ensemble:

'We have been preparing this repertoire for two or three months now. We enjoy playing here, especially in the church and especially as a double bass quartet; we are glad to play together. What is important is to adjust to the quartet, yet be unique - to be united and to play very well.'

Some of the opinions among the audience at the end of the musical evening:

'I think the compositions were very well-chosen - something we know, as well as something new. It was very interesting to me because the programme had both cello and double bass, and they are two instruments I love.'

'The two cellists gave an incredibly beautiful and varied performance, and the double bass quartet is a rather less known type, but today they proved this instrument can do much more than to sit in the orchestra and only play the harmonic support of the band. They really enjoyed playing music.'

'I thought it was a splendid idea to have a concert in the Lutheran Church. I feel like this is how the spiritual side of music can be highlighted. It was a very well-chosen repertoire,

it was performed very well; in short - we had a moment of peace and relaxation in the midst of a noisy city.'