In May of 2024, Bach chez Cioran, an angelic tragedy premiered at the Scala Theatre in Paris, and in November of 2024 you brought the same show to the Romanian stage in Iași. This month you start a series dedicated to the same theme. What can you tell us about the programme of the tour that you will be taking with actor and director Volodia Serre?

It is first of all a great joy for me to come back home with this special project and, after the success in Paris and Iași last November, I was very happy to organise this tour in Romania with the Gaudium Animae Foundation, with the first one on the 24^th of March in Bucharest at the ARCUB. After that, we return on the 14^th of May at the Sibiu Philharmonic, on the 18^th of May in Cluj at the Academy of Music and on the 19^th of May at the Brasov Philharmonic, and we may continue, perhaps in autumn, with several other cities and end in Iași.

In Cioran's writings, we find many pages about music and its uplifting powers, Bach's universe being characterised as "an angelic tragedy", a definition chosen as the title of your performances. Was there an inspiring text that triggered the idea of combining the music of Johann Sebastian Bach with the texts of the philosopher Emil Cioran?

Oh, yes, there was a lot. I was impressed by the beauty of Cioran's phrases and the beauty of Cioran's life, listening to Bach's music. As he said, it somehow became his religion and of course, all of us, listening to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, somehow, we ascend, so to speak, into another dimension. Cioran said that after a cantata, after an oratorio, there must be God. So many theologians and philosophers have wasted their days looking for arguments for his existence, forgetting the only valid argument, music. A few days ago, I came across a little phrase by the American writer Kurt Vonnegut, who said the same thing: perhaps the only existence of God is music itself. Of course, this is debatable, but what is absolutely clear is that when we all hear Bach's music, we do indeed think of what Cioran says, of the memory of paradise, and we certainly try to keep this memory somewhat forgotten. I myself was reading many of Cioran's writings, not necessarily about music, and suddenly I heard Bach's music in my mind, I don't know why. I tried, little by little, to explain this communion between the two, and I think that the common point is precisely that dramatism, as it were, that we find in oratorios, in cantatas, that path of man who somehow wants to climb towards God, towards a spirituality, and this is not done with great ease, but with a density. This density also exists in Cioran's texts and in Bach's music.

Cioran said, and I quote: "The key to Bach's music is the desire to escape from time". What is your connection with Bach's music?

Firstly, for us he is the God of musicians, let's call him that. As a child I studied a lot of the composer's works and realised how marvellous this language is, with all these polyphonies. I felt afterwards all the writings after even certain scholars who made some studies about the golden number in Bach's works. There is something almost inexplicable, a perfection. After the years of competitions that we are somehow obliged to do when we are still in lessons, after that I played Bach just for myself, because I find it such a special music, I had somehow put it on an altar and didn't dare to play it in recitals. Then, thanks to a proposal made by the director of the Muse & Piano Festival at the Louvre-Lens Museum, I was offered a recital that was 100% Bach. I said to myself that this was a challenge and I chose a few works, and on the day of the concert I felt the need to be accompanied by someone and I chose Cioran. I read some excerpts for the audience and right at that moment of the concert, with Cioran next to me, with the book on the piano and Bach's music, I felt that this project should be taken forward. The audience even encouraged me to do it. And so I had this wonderful collaboration with Volodia Serre, a fantastic actor and director who, as soon as I told him about this project, read the texts, listened to the music and had a vision of staging this project.

This artistic choice to combine music and literature is not the first step in your career. In the past, you have given similar performances in France with texts by Eugen Ionescu and Marin Sorescu. What is your perspective on this kind of performance?

I like to look for a point of view that I can illustrate, here it is, from a literary and musical point of view, and with this staging, I like it very much. This perhaps even came from my years as a student at the Paris Conservatoire Supérieur where I had the chance to take part in a course that taught us how to turn dramatic gesture into music and vice versa. I loved it so much that I afterwards I used some of my thoughts, my readings, most of them coming right from my teenage years, books that were in my parents' library, like this volume of poems The Road written by Marin Sorescu. Little by little, I translated these poems into French and shared them first with my close circle of friends, then with specialised people, and it became this wonderful project that I gave as part of the France Roumaine season with the famous actor Denis Lavant. I was also very happy, we went even further than I had hoped with this project, it toured in France and we even hope to do it again. It is, as I was saying, in a way, my desire to give the public this possibility to somehow understand music through the prism of literature and vice versa. Where words stop, the music resumes its journey towards a kernel of a certain truth, so to speak.

What is it like working with actor and director Volodia Serre?

It's a real pleasure. We've even collaborated on contemporary operas at the Bastille opera, so it's not the first time he's worked with musicians, and he's very passionate about Eastern European literature. Of course, Romania is a special case, because we are Latins, but he is very passionate about this literature, about what is happening in that part of Europe, and it is very nice to be able to work with someone who has this openness, this particular culture and an absolutely incredible sensitivity. He has always wanted to listen to the work, even when we are rehearsing with each other. Sometimes it happens in theatre that we say, okay, we're just doing the beginning and the end so that I can get through my text, and he always wanted the work to be played in its entirety so that he could get that tension. Here it is, really, music is art that is experienced live. I can only show what I studied yesterday by going back to the piano and giving an example. It is lived absolutely live, and that perhaps gives it this slightly magical but also vulnerable side. The audience is experiencing the music at the same time as us on stage. It's the same in theatre, and this shared experience, as a theatre actor and me as a musician, allows us to build this project. Now let me add something, I realised that not necessarily doing this in particular, I chose works in minor keys in this performance and I said yes, but still, in his music, Bach often brings a major key, that Picardian third, at the end and I wanted to create this micro cosmos and macro cosmos in the performance, to link them together and to end with a happy ending, so to speak.

What events do you have in your agenda for the upcoming period?

As I was saying, the first ones that are going to be in my agenda are related to this tour in Romania in March and May. Then, in the summer months I'll be in a few festivals in France, and then in autumn there are a lot of events. There will be a very beautiful concert on the 12^th of September in Paris, at the Salle Colonne, after which I will return to the country in October with another Dinu Lipatti project, which I will tell you more about in due course, and, here we are, perhaps a third part of the Bach chez Cioran tour, an angelic tragedy and a few concerts with the K ensemble, of which I am a member and with which I like to discover a repertoire other than that for solo piano.