My guest this evening is the Director of the Bucharest Early Music Festival, Laurențiu Constantin. Welcome back to the Radio România Muzical studio!

It's great to be back - thank you for the invitation!

So, Laurențiu Constantin, the Bucharest Early Music Festival reaches a milestone this year - its 20th edition. That's why I'd like us to take a brief look back and have you tell us how this project was born and how it has evolved up to this 20th edition?

How it all started is quite a personal story. It began with falling in love. Over twenty years ago, I met a young harpsichordist - Raluca Enea. I fell in love with her. Things went beautifully; we got married and… 21 years ago we said, "Let's create a festival!" I started working on the management side, while she focused on artistic production and conceptual direction, and little by little… For the first edition, the highlights were some of her professors from Frankfurt. At that time, Raluca was doing her master's degree in harpsichord there, and her presence in Frankfurt gave her access to meet people whom we, here in Eastern Europe, looked up to almost like gods. I knew them from their recordings. There wasn't the kind of frenzy we have today with social media and the internet, where everything is just a click away… Nowadays, you don't even have to click anymore - probably out of laziness - you just have to talk. I've noticed that people don't even send me written messages anymore; they just speak and send voice notes. And I have to listen to what they say.

Things then evolved in a way that we consider natural. We learned along the way. There isn't really a school that teaches you how to organize festivals - I don't think there is one even in Western Europe, let alone here. We refined our tastes, we shaped our opinions. Now we know how to do it. Back then, we knew too - at least in principle. Authenticity is the core criterion of early music. The genres of early music are performed only in the manner in which they were written and only on the instruments for which they were composed, when it comes to instrumental music. For example, Johann Sebastian Bach never wrote anything for the piano. So, playing Bach on the piano, from our point of view, is something exotic. We've stayed true to that path.

Some people saw us as a kind of purists, even "musical fundamentalists," so to speak. But we've stayed true to our direction and to our beliefs. We've reached a certain age, a certain maturity. That happened around the 10th edition - exactly ten years ago - when there was a sort of breakthrough, including in our visual communication. That's also when a phrase was born that became our slogan, and even more than that. It's not just a slogan; it's our credo: "Discover the novelty of early music." We're not engaged in musical archaeology, even though there's a lot of valuable musicological research behind it. Classical music is, let's not say easier, because it's complex too - but you have the score, you place it in front of you, and you play. Well, in this field you have to do research - a lot of research. The score alone isn't enough, because you have to reconstruct how the music might have been performed 300 years ago, let's say. Fortunately, the genres of early music - especially Baroque and Byzantine music - are highly academic forms, which means there are many sources, clues, and directions that allow us to recreate that music with a very high probability of authenticity, close to how it was once heard. And this involves every element: the expressive and technical aspects, the specific ornaments of each national school, and, of course, the instruments themselves - a Baroque violin is not the same as a modern violin, and its limits and possibilities are very different from those of the modern instrument. It's the same with the Baroque cello, or with instruments that are no longer used in contemporary music, such as the viola da gamba or the harpsichord - although there are competitions and festivals where contemporary works are performed on Baroque instruments. It's quite an exotic phenomenon. I actually heard something like that in Bruges, which hosts the most important early music festival and competition in the world.

Tell me, please - over these 20 editions, how has the audience evolved? You were speaking earlier about that fundamental principle of the Bucharest Early Music Festival: performing on period instruments. But we have to admit that before this era, there was what we might call the "romantic period" of Baroque performance - with large orchestras and modern instruments - which certainly left its mark. Then came this new period, when we moved closer to the old instruments and their sound, which is strikingly different for someone unfamiliar with it, compared to modern instruments - for example, the classical violin you mentioned earlier. So how has the audience evolved? Is there a knowledgeable, well-informed audience for this kind of music in Romania today?

There is indeed a knowledgeable audience - we can definitely say that. This informed audience forms the core of our public. The audience is the most dynamic component in everything we build. We are among those who believe that there is no such thing as art for art's sake - art must be shared, music must be shared. We make music for this audience; that's where we draw our energy from, and that energy comes back to us from them. The audience… as I said, there's always a core group. But there are also several categories of listeners. There's a sort of circle with slices - a mix of marketing, a mix of various things. That's also how our audience looks. First of all, the core audience is never very large in percentage terms, but it's enough to sometimes fill more than half of a hall with two or three hundred seats. Then there's the classical music audience, which we find at Sala Radio or the Romanian Athenaeum - somewhat less so the audience at the opera, which belongs to a different sphere. There's also the jazz-loving audience. Jazz is very close to Baroque music, and their audience is very similar to ours. Baroque music is, in a way, the most rigorously free music: first you learn to follow all the rules, and only then can you break whichever rules you want…

…You can also improvise.

Yes. Baroque music is improvisational. When our festival gained some recognition and even became a small social phenomenon - some festivals become very popular for a while and it's trendy to go… let's go to this festival, let's go to… - in all areas, both in pop culture and in rock… that's when an audience appeared that came to be seen, which is actually a very good thing. There also appeared an audience that we generically call the snob audience. For us, this has no pejorative connotation - the people in this audience have many, many virtues. One of these virtues, perhaps the most important, is respect: respect for the artistic act, for the musicians, and the respect of buying a ticket. Because if a project - and I say this as a manager - if you have no budgets, only projects, you have beautiful, wonderful dreams, but at a certain level of professionalism, things require budgets. Then there's what we call the casual audience, who appear almost tangentially - maybe they see a beautiful poster, or hear a recording, or there's some spark that prompts them to buy a ticket and enter the concert hall.

We have an audience that has become more refined. At the beginning, it was a generalist audience, coming from the more romantic or classical tradition of early music, especially Baroque. Over time - it's been 20 years, after all - people have learned that Bach or Rameau are not performed like Italian bel canto. They've learned that molto vibrato and all those romantic violin mannerisms, which are beautiful in their own way, have nothing to do with Baroque music. They've learned that Baroque music involves a completely different approach to agogics, articulation, and ornamentation - and they are now able to recognize and distinguish these elements.

When I was younger, 20 years ago, I must confess I looked at the snob audience a bit condescendingly - the ones who didn't know how to divide movements, applauded between them, and so on. I looked at them somewhat, well… judgmentally. But then, when I saw many of them humbly following a path - people with extensive listening experience, people who read and studied… I met a young woman who had started learning French, which she didn't know, just to have access to certain sources of information. She was in love with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants and wanted to be able to access those sources.

And then, people became connoisseurs. I even get phone calls telling me, "Look who won the Diapason d'Or in such-and-such category," and they find out before I do - and I, in theory, am someone reasonably well-informed in this field.

The audience… especially after the 10th edition, things began to refine even more. Then there was another hurdle: the pandemic.

Behavior… you asked me about the audience. We have an audience study conducted with sociologists from INCFC, so we generally know what it looks like. It's an overwhelmingly female audience, and it's a young audience. I am considered old for our audience. In recent years, the average age has increased by about 5-7 years - this is an empirical observation of mine, based on concert halls and ticket sales; when you're older, you generally have greater purchasing power. It seems like a reasonable explanation.

An educated audience, very young, between 25 and 45 years old - that accounts for roughly 82% of our audience.

Which is very important! Let's also talk about the other side: the professionals. Is there an attraction for young people to this field, which is obviously different - you have to specialize in an instrument like the Baroque violin, or the theorbo, an instrument you don't encounter in classical music. Does this happen? Do you meet ensembles, young musicians who want to come into this world of early music?

Yes, there are quite a few young people for whom Baroque music, in particular, holds a certain fascination. And from generation to generation, over the years, I've seen more and more young musicians approaching this music, exploring it. Those who want to study seriously usually go abroad, because that's where they find well-established early music schools. Sometimes they start here and then go abroad for specialization before returning; some of them get lost along the way or return to the broader corpus of classical music. Others carve their own path, and they are among these. There are young musicians who have studied in Basel at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis - the most important early music school in the world - and have studied with prominent teachers.

It's a path where, if you want to walk it, you must not be tempted by swan songs. If you want to perform this music at a certain level, after completing the early stages of formal education - and education is a lifelong process - it becomes a bit harder. One of the three essential needs of the Romanian early music scene is the need for performance opportunities.

An artist, an instrumentalist, cannot spend a whole year studying alone in their room. No - they need to perform. And if they are a professional or semi-professional, they need to appear on stage in a respectable way: on an important stage, with a well-organized concert, well promoted, with a program for the hall, and a musicological text - the minimum essentials.

When you're an amateur, you work a little differently. There's a sphere for amateurs and a sphere for professionals or semi-professionals. Most professionals maintain a dual approach: they are usually employed somewhere, in a classical orchestra, and they also perform early music, fulfilling their vocation in that field.

To give you an example: Rafael Butaru, who is one of the core instrumentalists in the Sempre ensemble in Bucharest and the concertmaster of the George Enescu Philharmonic, or a more recent member of Sempre, Răsvan Dumitru, who is an exceptional violinist in an outstanding quartet, Arcadia. And there are others… Melinda Beres, who studied with Mira Glodeanu and is from Cluj, and who performs quite a lot of Baroque music with us. Just recently, she was performing something by Bartók - a concert for piano and violin, I saw.

Let's go back to the 20th edition, which opens this Sunday at Sala Radio with a concert described by you, the festival's organizing team, as extremely rare. In what sense is it rare?

It's rare because it is performed very infrequently. I remember - and I've even tracked this - the last time Musical Offering, one of Johann Sebastian Bach's absolute masterpieces, was performed in Bucharest was 10 years ago, also on our festival stage, with roughly the same ensemble, Il Gardellino, but with different musicians. Among them, Jan De Winne, the flutist, will be performing this time.

One of the founders of the ensemble.

Yes, he is one of the founders and one of the two leaders of the ensemble. It's also rare because it's a piece of great virtuosity. It's as we like it, but it's not easy to play Musical Offering. The Art of Fugue, the Goldberg Variations, Musical Offering - these works are at the very top, in a very rarefied realm.

Then there's also this aspect of early music and authenticity in performance - it's one thing to play with a Baroque cello, traverso flute, harpsichord, and Baroque violin, and quite another to play with a piano, silver flute, and so on...

After that, I found it somehow symbolic and invigorating that the 10th edition of our festival ended with Musical Offering, and now the 20th edition opens with Musical Offering, with roughly the same musicians, in the same venue, Sala Radio.

In addition to Il Gardellino and Jan De Winne, there are other top artists in early music. Here, I would mention the venerable Catalan maestro Jordi Savall and his ensemble Hespèrion XXI, as well as the male vocal ensemble The King's Singers, right? And from Romania, I saw two ensembles listed on the program.

Yes, Sempre - the Bucharest Baroque ensemble Sempre, founded by the harpsichordist Raluca Enea five years ago - and Fonte di Gioia, founded and musically directed by the bassist Istvan Csata from Cluj.

Tell us also about the other artists. I wouldn't want us to leave anyone out!

The festival opens with Musical Offering, but Bach's Musical Offering is part of a triad. On the 9th, Musical Offering is performed; on the 10th, at the Auditorium Hall of the National Museum of Art of Romania (MNAR), there will be a concert featuring the viola organista, played by a Polish musician, Slawomir Zubrzycki. The viola organista is, very briefly, an instrument sketched - we can't really say "designed" - in three drafts by Leonardo da Vinci, found in the Codex Atlanticus. Several people have attempted to construct a viola organista, but Zubrzycki succeeded in building the first instrument that actually plays and produces sound, making history in the process. He is both a pianist and a Polish instrument maker. He was also in Bucharest 11 years ago with the viola organista Opus 1, as he calls it, the first model; now he is coming with Opus 3 - in the meantime, he has built two more.

Then, on the 11th, at the Romanian Athenaeum, Double, again with Il Gardellino - this time in a larger formation. It's a concert built around double concertos, with two solo instruments, something that is rarely conceptualized this way even on classical music stages.

Then, on November 16th, Ostinato. You mentioned Fonte di Gioia from Cluj. It's a concert built around Baroque pieces featuring the musical technique called ostinato, which literally means "stubborn." In modern music, for example, one of the most famous ostinatos appears in Ravel's Boléro.

What comes next?

Then we move to November 20th- a harpsichord solo of Bach, called Solo Bach, with Marco Mencoboni. Marco is one of the most accomplished, lively, and eccentric harpsichordists of the moment. He specializes in Bach, performing very challenging music, but somehow makes it seem playful. He is a character in his own right, a showman beyond the exceptional quality of the music he performs.

Then, on the 23rd, we have The King's Singers, coming to Bucharest with Renaissance. This is a program dedicated to the musical Renaissance of the British Isles - a program we wanted because we've never had anything like it seriously in our festival, and an ensemble that, like Savall and Hespèrion, is a legend. This year, in their 58th year of existence, they've gone through six or seven generations of singers, yet the sound remains the same. Infact, in the past few weeks, I did an exercise: I listened to recordings from 40-50 years ago with my eyes closed, and then listened to recent recordings. They are absolutely recognizable. If you close your eyes, you can't tell it's The King's Singers from 2025 - it's extraordinary what these people have been able to achieve.

This concert will also take place at Sala Radio.

Yes, also at Sala Radio.

On November 25th, we have Xavier Díaz-Latorre, Savall's lutenist, who comes with a theorbo and a program that, in our view, is the best possible advocacy for the instrument and the music written for it.

The day after his concert, Savall's other colleagues from Hespèrion, together with Maestro Savall, will perform on November 27th- also here at Sala Radio.

We conclude on November 30th, at the Romanian Athenaeum, with the Baroque ensemble Sempre, in a concert called Sempre 5 - an anniversary concert. This concept doesn't really exist in Baroque music, but let's say it's a concert of "evergreens": pieces that have marked the ensemble's evolution over these five years, and beautiful pieces meant to bring joy to the audience. They are among the most unexpected - from pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach to Albicastro, a composer roughly contemporary with Vivaldi, who, unfairly, history has not remembered, even though his music is wonderful. I've read writings by musicologists who place Albicastro alongside Vivaldi, on roughly the same level.

We had a project called Baroc Unknown, in which we performed composers whose music is rarely heard. And for next year, we have four pieces - including, for sure, one by Vivaldi - that will be absolute world premieres in Romania.

And since you mentioned next year, what about the 21st edition, if the 20th hasn't even started yet? I suppose you've already thought about it.

Yes, of course we have, we're working on it. In fact, just this morning I was working on the 2027 edition - not because we're particularly organized by nature, but because we work with artists who have very busy schedules, and if you don't plan ahead, you're lost. For next year, Raluca came up with a wonderful idea, which is called… We've had a theme for each edition. This year, the theme is "20 years," that's it. Last year we had Affetti, we had Orient and Occident… Next year, the theme is Europe - especially since early music, both European and Eastern, represents the first full-fledged phenomenon in which European identity was expressed. Today, the concept of Europeanism is discussed and navigated in a very fluid way. In the past, in ancient times, and then almost disappearing by the Renaissance, Europe meant something specific and was connected to a mythological universe. Europeanism, as a symbol of solidarity and a shared identity of the peoples from the Atlantic Ocean to the Caucasus - for geographically, the Caucasus was the border - in the Baroque era there was a similar fluidity, even in matters that today we might call copywriting. Bach has several essential pieces in his output that, melodically, seem to belong to Vivaldi. Composers borrowed from one another, and no one was offended - there was none of today's notion of "you stole my music." A master would take a piece, a melodic line, or a theme and treat it in such a way that occasionally you would recognize a measure or two of the original line. It seems that even the Regium theme in The Musical Offering, which Frederick the Great gave to Bach, was not entirely his own - Frederick, a passionate and respected flutist of the time, did not create it himself. Some musicologists believe it actually comes from Handel, and they have even identified the corresponding melodic line in Handel's works.

So, Europe - next year. Will you also have some artists coming?

I'll mention three of them. Sempre - Sempre is the festival's resident ensemble, always presenting fresh repertoire and releasing a new recording next year. Then there's a Swedish musician with something that has never been performed in Romania: the nyckelharpa, an instrument previously unheard here. It's a stringed instrument played with a bow, like a violin, and has keys. In terms of the keys, it doesn't resemble an organ or a harpsichord - it's closer to a hurdy-gurdy. You can't really compare it to anything, because it doesn't resemble anything. If you close your eyes, it sounds like a violin - a masterful violin with a rich tone. He will come; we are in advanced discussions, almost certainly, with the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO). Probably Emilio Villalba will return, an old friend of our festival, though we don't yet know what repertoire he will perform. He has previously performed with us Sefardica, Sephardic music, and a repertoire of Dimitrie Cantemir, including Peșrevuri.

And now, I - though I am not the artistic director of this festival - I feel very close at heart to Beștenigâr Peșrev. At the time, I named one of the peșrev pieces… the most notable, the catchiest, if I may say so, from Cantemir's Book of the Science of Music.

If I may take advantage of having the microphone, I want to mention two more things that we consider important and will happen next year. Between January and June, the Bucharest Early Music Season takes place, which began 15 years ago with Bach motets and a lecture by Neagu Djuvara. Over time, this early music season - the only one of its kind - has evolved… It is now almost at the festival level in terms of artistic quality, with musicians… Xavier Díaz-Latorre will come, Jan De Winne will present a program that I am keeping as a surprise, together with the Sempre ensemble.

Also next year will mark the first public appearance of a project we hope will bring a meaningful contribution and make a difference: the Eastern European Early Music Platform. At this moment, we have 18 members, stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean - the Baltic states, down through Romania, the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey. It's an achievement we have been working toward since before the pandemic. Then the pandemic scattered us all, and we've now regrouped in this way.

Laurențiu Constantin, I wish you and your collaborators every success! May this anniversary edition be full of audiences, and may it be followed by many more moments that enrich the musical life of Bucharest - and beyond, of the entire country. I believe you will also take such events on tour across Romania. And I suggest we end with Bach, because in my opinion, without Bach, I don't know what music today would be - and surely it would be much poorer.

We could paraphrase a great poet: "If Bach is not, nothing is!"

Exactly!