In the programme we prepared for the Easter Week especially for you, we included two special editions of the Radio Romania Music Concerts radio show. As usual, this programme offers concerts and recitals - either organised or recorded by our radio station - which you may want to listen to again or which you could not attend.

This time, the host, Jeanine Costache, offers a selection of no less than four concerts hosted by the Romanian Athenaeum.

On Monday, 21^st April, 2014, starting at 19:00, we offer a selection of pieces performed during the concert given by the Royal Camerata Ensemble on 4^th December, 2013, as part of the Great Soloists, Great Conductors series. They were accompanied by conductor Horia Andreescu and the solo violinist Ilian Gârneţ, and their repertoire was exclusively romantic - Saint Saëns's Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, op. 28, Pablo de Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen and excerpts from the Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet-Rodion Scendrin.

Monday's edition will also include selections from the concert given by the Romanian Youth Orchestra on 18^th May, 2013. The theme of the evening was Romeo and Juliet. We will listen to works inspired by the Shakespearean play - selections from Charles Gounod's opera Romeo and Juliet and the Romeo and Juliet ballet suite by Sergei Prokofiev. The Romanian Youth Orchestra's endeavour was supported by the conductor Cristian Mandeal, the soprano Irina Iordăchescu and the tenor Teodor Ilincăi.

On Tuesday, 22^nd April, 2014, starting at 19:00, we will meet the Romanian Youth Orchestra again, led by the conductor David Crescenzi this time, in a concert from the Magic Spring series (5^th March, 2014). Along with them, the soprano Cellia Costea and the baritone George Petean performed a programme that made us answer the question 'Do you like opera?' We will listen to pages from the operas Nabucco, Don Carlo, A Masked Ball and Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi, the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Rossini's Barber of Seville, Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns and Manon Lescaut and Tosca by Puccini.

For a perfect ending to the evening, we will finish with Violoncelissimo 100. More precisely, with selections from the concert given by the Violoncelissimo Ensemble on 26^th May, 2013. This concert brought together 100 cellists on the stage of the Romanian Athenaeum, under the baton of Cristian Mandeal; at the same time, important cellists of our country performed solo parts: Marin Cazacu, Alexandra Guţu, Răzvan Suma, Filip Papa and Ştefan Cazacu, among others. The programme included arrangements for cello orchestras of works by Constantin Dimitrescu, David Popper, Tomaso Albinoni, Astor Piazzolla, Carl Orff and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Radio Romania Music Concerts - on Monday, 21^st April and Tuesday, 22^nd April, 2014, starting at 19:00.