"Music of the Spheres" was the title of the recital proposed last evening, on November 13th, 2024, by pianist Andrei Gologan, a musician with a consistent international career, winner of the "Heirs of Musical Romania" scholarship in 2020. We learned from the presentation made by Cristina Comandașu, RRM manager and initiator of the "Heirs of Musical Romania" project, that the idea behind the program was the Pythagorean concept that the terrestrial world and the cosmos are connected through harmonious vibrations and mathematical proportions, just as musical notes are correlated in a piece of music.

Dubbed by the international press "a poet of the piano", Andrei Gologan offered the audience present last evening in the Great Hall of the Romanian Athenaeum a selection of works through which he believes we can enter the cosmic universe of the unknown. Thus, the first part of the program brought together small-scale works by Komitas Vardapet, Aleksandr Scriabin and George Enescu, played without pause, a juxtaposition of creations that "unite precisely this search for something else, for spheres, for a human musical world that we cannot perceive in everyday life", as Andrei Gologan said in an interview for Radio România Muzical. And I could perceive in the musical intentions every sonic transition, the pianist's touch offering wide dynamic and expressive ranges, revealing charming timbral weavings, from diaphanous to full of vigor sonorities. In the second part we heard the well-known Sonata No. 3 by Johannes Brahms, another opportunity for the pianist to display his own interpretive vision. At the request of the audience, in keeping with the theme, Andrei Gologan offered as an encore "Clair de lune" from Claude Debussy's Claude Debussy, a piece much appreciated by the audience.

At the end of the recital we gathered some impressions from the audience:

Dumitru Avakian, music critic: Debussy's "Clair de lune" is the poetic universe of this marvelous pianist, who, here he is, offers at the Athenaeum an extended recital, marked by his own vision of the entire repertoire spanning several centuries of music. Let's not forgetmusic from Scriabin to Brahms and Debussy, two centuries in which the vision of music, of functional sound, changed. Gologan is the one who creates his own poetic musical universe within which he draws, interprets and comments on this music.

I offer you other opinions of the listeners present last night under the dome of the Romanian Athenaeum:

- Very interesting. I came to this recital through Rotary Pipera. It's the third time I'vecome, and I can say that I really enjoyed the last piece.

- It was very nice. It was relaxing music for me. After many hours of work, I enjoyed spending an hour listening to Andrei Gologan. It was very relaxing and very welcome.

- Sonata No. 3, indeed, extraordinarily interesting and the interpretation superb.

I also chatted with two students from the Faculty of Letters:

- I learned about the recital from the faculty. They were giving away free tickets, and we said we couldn't miss such an opportunity. It was wonderful, we loved it.

- I'm delighted that they're still sponsoring and promoting these kinds of activities. I'mreally glad that students are being pushed to participate in these kinds of activities and that we are encouraged to look a little bit beyond our horizon. It seems to me that we can make better connections by participating in such events.