The fourth tour promoting Baroque music, supported by violinist Răzvan Stoica together with his sister, pianist Andreea Stoica, begins on Monday, May 12th, 2025, at the Romanian National Opera in Iași. On this occasion, Răzvan Stoica spoke with Ioana Țintea.

Răzvan Stoica, the fourth edition of the Baroque Tour opens in Iași on May 12th. What does this reunion with the Romanian audience through Baroque music mean to you?

For me, every concert in this tour is more than just a meeting with the audience - it's a confession, I'd say. Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Johann Sebastian Bach - they're not just composers, but in a way, spirits that still speak to us, and our duty as musicians is to listen and give them voice with sincerity.

We set out with the thought that every concert will be a unique experience. I can't wait!

For the opening concert in Iași, 150 seats are reserved and offered free of charge to students from Iași high schools who are part of the "A Stradivarius in Schools" program - a project you initiated. What impact do you hope this experience will have on young audiences?

We very much want to introduce them to the art of Baroque music. In addition to the 150 seats reserved for high school students in Iași, we've also set aside seats for the "Save the Children" Foundation. We genuinely want to bring music closer to young people, and I believe that through this project, "A Stradivarius in Schools," which I carry out with the Gaudium Animae Cultural Foundation, we've managed to connect them with music.

Baroque Tour Opus 4 centers around Bach's works. Why Bach this year?

First of all, this is a Bach year - it marks 340 years since the composer's birth - and I've always felt that the violin concertos beautifully complement the solo violin partitas. We're performing a harpsichord concerto, the D minor Concerto 1052, which I'll be playing on the violin. It's a very technically challenging piece and, at the same time, it rounds out the program nicely alongside the other composers. That includes Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer - the Concerti Armonici, specifically the one in A major, which might be a premiere on the Iași stage on May 12th.

Tell us about the tour itinerary!

We'll continue in major cities - Cluj, Bucharest, Timișoara, Hunedoara, and even Bușteni. The tour schedule will be a bit special because we'll continue into June, then pause for the "George Enescu" Festival. After that, we'll resume with the rest of the cities on the tour.

As always, you'll be performing with your sister, pianist Andreea Stoica, this time joined by the Camerata Stradivarius Ensemble - a group you founded in 2010. Looking back, how much has this group of musicians grown, and how close are you to your original dream?

A great deal, and I'm glad to see that the musicians I work with are increasingly interested in the artistic and original aspects of interpretation. I'm noticing a real cohesion among us - we sound like a solo instrument. I believe we've come to know each other very well, we play a lot together. The tours we did last year and this year speak for themselves, and it's always a joy to perform in front of the audience in our own original way. And it helps me as a soloist to have such a well-integrated group around me.