My guest this evening is Ciprian Țuțu, the conductor of the Radio Academic Choir. Welcome back to the Radio România Muzical studio!

Good evening, and thank you for the invitation!

On Wednesday, at the Radio Hall, the Academic Radio Choir celebrates another milestone: 85 years since its founding. Established in 1940 by conductor and composer Ioan Croitoru, the choir has been shaped over the years by masters such as D. D. Botez, Gheorghe Danga, Dumitru D. Stancu, Constantin Petrovici, Emanuel Elenescu, Alexandru Șumski, Carol Litvin, Aurel Grigoraș, and Dan Mihai Goia. Ciprian Țuțu, how do you feel stepping into this lineage and carrying forward such a tradition?

It's a mission which, after nearly ten years at the helm of this wonderful ensemble, I must confess, continues to fascinate me every single day. Meeting my colleagues, the challenges each project brings, and the responsibility of carrying on this legacy with energy, enthusiasm, passion, and love for choral music are so absorbing that I rarely even have time to stop and think about how I feel. I simply take things as they come.

And right now, they come fresh from rehearsal: the second-to-last one before the concert. The energy is still there, and I can hardly wait for Wednesday evening in order to present the works we've prepared.

As you said, it's been almost 10 years. In a way, you too are celebrating a decade at the podium of this choir. How close are you today to the artistic goals you set for yourself at the beginning?

Some goals are broad; others are tailored to each specific project.

On a general level, I inherited a choir of extraordinary quality. Over the years, I've sought to introduce more unusual challenges into the repertoire. I wanted the choir's versatility, its ability to adapt to any musical style, to be experienced by every member not with apprehension, but with joy, with the sense of opening towards a new horizon. I believe one of my missions has been to shape the choral sound according to the music we perform at any given time.

More specifically, for each concert theme, especially in our a cappella programs, I've tried to dress this choir in a timbral and expressive "attire" worthy of its tremendous potential. I hope I've managed, at least to a large degree, to accomplish these artistic aims I set for myself.

In 1975, D. D. Botez said: "For me, the Radio Choir is the platform from which I launched myself toward heights I had long dreamed of. That is why I will remain forever grateful and will never forget its incomparable sound."

What does the sound of the Academic Radio Choir look like today?

Paraphrasing Maestro D. D. Botez, I would say, improvising here, the Radio Choir is the platform that catapulted me from Brașov on a January evening… It was January 26^th; I was the last candidate in the competition for the conductor position. It lifted me from the Brașov Opera Choir into this fascinating universe I had dreamed of but never dared imagine I would actually belong to. Not that I didn't have extraordinary experiences with my colleagues in Brașov, but repeating the same titles season after season can become limiting. What I longed for at the time was greater repertorial breadth, the chance to explore major works of the vocal-symphonic repertoire, and especially the rare privilege of working on a cappella projects where the choir itself is the sole protagonist.

Looking back, I think that evening, January 26^th, when it was also the 15^th anniversary of Aurel Grigoraș's passing, was a moment when the heavens opened for me. And, figuratively speaking, that's the day I "registered my residency" in Bucharest.

Let's stay with this collaboration between the Academic Radio Choir and the orchestra. Over the years, the choir has worked with some of the greatest conductors of our time: James Levine, for example, who sent the choir a message of congratulations on its 50^th anniversary after a memorable performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic. Many other masters have stood before the choir too.

What remains after such encounters? What do you personally feel stays, after an encounter with such masters, in the sound, in the minds of the choristers of the Academic Radio Choir?

First of all, meeting these great maestros has the same aura as encountering a major star of classical music. Because we must admit, this field has its own celebrities, doesn't it? And such an opportunity, for instance, just to pick a name at random, in the previous edition of the Enescu Festival we had the chance to work with Maestro Simon Rattle. A fascinating figure! True, the choir's role in that program was modest: Enescu's Third Symphony, but for us it was a wonderful moment to meet a mountain of talent, a mountain of balance… That kind of refinement is Enescu. Of course, Simon Rattle doesn't conduct Enescu every day, but his ability to capture those inner mechanisms, that distinctive vibration of Romanian music, the way he treated the choir in just one rehearsal and the performance itself, bearing in mind the choir in that piece is one instrument among many, is simply mesmerizing. You're struck by that power of concentration, that capacity great maestros, great conductors, have for distilling everything to its essence. That's the difference: what we might need a substantial number of rehearsals to achieve, a great conductor can resolve in just one.

85 years of the Academic Radio Choir. How did you design Wednesday's concert program, did you see it as a synthesis, a milestone?

I certainly hope it isn't a final stage, but rather a bridge toward the future. It is an anniversary moment.

I'll confess something I also shared with my colleagues: until mid-summer, I had an entirely different structure in mind for this concert, one I've postponed for another occasion. In the calm of those summer evenings in Brașov, talking with my dear mentor Nicolae Bica, I thought: what do we usually do at an anniversary? We invite friends and revisit cherished memories together. That's what we wanted this 85^th-anniversary concert to be: a look back at our great achievements.

It is a journey through time, selecting from each thematic concert a representative piece, an opportunity to showcase the choir's complexity, its ability to span, in just over one hour, an entire musical history: from the Renaissance, through the Baroque, and of course the Romantic repertoire where the choir feels most at home. We also revisit French music, after two dedicated projects in recent years, without forgetting Ravel, whom we celebrate this year. We've chosen his only a cappella cycle, Trois Chansons. As for Romanian music, making a comprehensive selection was difficult, but choices had to be made. We begin with Gheorghe Dima, not by chance: a bit of local patriotism, of course, and also because we mark 100 years since his passing, with his well-known and representative madrigal Ziua Ninge. We couldn't possibly leave out Alexandru Pașcanu, an extraordinary composer and someone very close to my own teacher, Nicolae Bica, whom I mentioned earlier. We chose the short suite that we have performed before. I also couldn't overlook the Cluj school, which has produced so many important names, and I selected the iconic, emblematic work Arhaisme by Sigismund Toduță.

At last year's SIMN concert, we had a very focused but spectacular encounter with Ce-ai de gând, a work by the Bucharest-based composer Mihai Măniceanu. We brought it back to the audience's attention, together with another piece that Maestro Gruescu kindly shared with me, Radu Paladi's Dar de nuntă.

And the cherry on top, I would say, the highlight of our program, is the return to the Radio Choir's repertoire of a piece that truly made history during Dan Mihai Goia's 15 years as principal conductor. He is also the special guest of the evening. I proposed, something I'm glad he accepted, and for which I thank him sincerely, that he present to the public once again a more seasoned, more mature interpretation of Irina Odăgescu-Țuțuianu's wonderful work Tatăl Nostru.

The concert begins at 7 p.m. on Wednesday at the Radio Hall, it will be broadcast live, and it is presented by our colleague, Ștefan Costache. What other surprises await us? Soloists? You just have to talk about them too.

Absolutely! I am always so happy, fascinated, and proud, and I warmly embrace every member of the Radio Academic Choir each time, because they are wonderful people and exceptionally skilled professionals. And whenever I've taken on a project, whether a cappella or vocal-symphonic, I've always been able to find among the members of the Radio Choir the right, and very right, people to take on solo roles, or even instrumental parts, because many of them are knowledgeable and active performers on various instruments.

So, on Wednesday evening, we will hear sopranos Olga Murariu Caia, Valentina Verlan, and Anastasia Turkoz; alto player Camelia Cuzub; tenors Cristian Paraschiv, Nicolae Simonov, and Mihnea Stănescu; and bass Gabriel Bănică.

Of course, four of the works on the program are accompanied by piano, and at the piano will be the tireless Carmen Săndulescu, who, in truth, always manages to sound like an entire orchestra.

After the concert, the audience is invited to the foyer for an autograph session and I want you to tell us more about it. What album will you be signing?

Our latest release, Noi umblăm și colindăm, an anniversary CD featuring Romanian carols, both well-known and lesser sung. It grew out of a project we began two years ago: performing carols together with a trombone quartet. It's not something you encounter very often, but it's certainly no novelty either, since even in the Baroque period, and later, in the Romantic era with Bruckner, you can find works written for this combination: choral voices plus trombone. Thus, on several tracks of this CD you'll hear the sonorities of The Radio Trombones alongside the Radio Academic Choir. All of the arrangements, in fact, are by Florian Radu, who is also a member of the National Radio Orchestra. This CD is also significant because its playlist brings together works representing the main Romanian compositional schools. We have the Bucharest school, of course, represented in part by a very talented young composer, Andrei Petrache, whose Christmas Choral Suite we performed. Naturally, there are also better-known names: Costică Andrei and Radu Paladi. Then we have the Iași school, represented by Vasile Spătărelu, and the Cluj school, represented by a colleague of mine who is originally from Brașov but Cluj-adopted: the wonderful choral composer and true lover of choral music, Șerban Marcu.

So, from this perspective as well, the CD offers an interesting approach: an exploration of the choral tradition within the genre of carols and Christmas songs, which I hope will bring listeners much joy.

We should mention the album was released by Casa Radio Publishing House.I'd like to ask you: after Wednesday's concert, what are the next events in which the Academic Radio Choir will take part, or where it will be in the spotlight?

The next one is the December 19^th concert with the National Radio Orchestra, which, I understand, is already sold out. It's again a program of carols, once more in Florian's arrangements, a new musical 'garment' for other beautiful Romanian carols. So, December 19^th. After that, in January, we return to our usual cycle of collaborations, which we hope will be as many and as frequent as possible, with our colleagues in the National Radio Orchestra and the Radio Chamber Orchestra. There will be Mozart's Requiem, followed later by an opera gala. We are slowly but surely preparing for the second half of the season.

Thank you very much for being here. I wish you great success and a hall full of lovers of choral art!