Veronica Bojescu was one of Marin Constantin's close collaborators, a professional whom he always trusted and who witnessed the formation and development of the Romanian choral ensemble.

As far as I know, you have been alongside Marin Constantin from the very beginning, when he founded the Madrigal Choir.

I met Maestro Marin Constantin in 1960, three years before the founding of "Madrigal", when he came to the Conservatory as an assistant in the conducting department, while I was a 17-and-a-half-year-old first year student. The first astonishment that Maestro Marin Constantin created for our class of students was that he proved to us that choir was something completely different from what we had known before. There were then those choirs that sang only patriotic music and it was a kind of absolutely banal, stupid, and completely unrelated to art. When Maestro Marin Constantin came to our class and gave us our first conducting course, we were astonished to discover that, in fact, the choir meant something completely different, because Marin Constantin, although he was our teacher for only one semester, because after that they moved him to the Ministry of Culture and made him the director of music, in that semester he made many of us addicted to conducting. Sabin Păutza was also in our class, and after that he had a superb career as an international conductor, Cornel Calistru, who was the conductor of the Iasi Opera for a whole life, myself, and many others. Marin Constantin was a visionary from the very beginning. Speaking of the founding of the "Madrigal" in 1963, from that moment on he knew exactly how the choir he envisioned would sound. Combining those non vibrato sounds of the girls' voices, starting from the idea that in the Renaissance sopranos and altos were children, therefore non vibrato voices, and combining them with the mature voices of the men, he came up with this choir of a very special clarity and sonority.

Not an easy path to follow, was it? How did Marin Constantin work to achieve the sound he dreamed of?

What was absolutely unique in all this life of the "Madrigal" was the participation that Maestro Marin demanded from each one of us, down to the last drop of energy, sweat, and feeling, because without the sensitive interior of each one of us, there was no point in being in the "Madrigal", it was impossible. At one point, after singing Myriam Marbe's "Ritual for the Thirst of the Earth", for example, he criticized us in the most serious way, that we hadn't sufficiently experienced the work because it wasn't raining, because it usually rained, to top it all. Coincidence, not coincidence, but that's how it happened. When I went on my first tour of America in 1969, when I left the East Coast by airplane for the West Coast, I found the newspapers headlined: Californians, Prepare for Rain, Madrigal Choir is Coming and Singing "Ritual for the Thirst of the Earth", which is some inexplicable stuff like that, basically. Still about memories, it was our first tour since 1968 in Spain, when after two days and two nights on the train, without a sleeping car, we arrived in Barcelona at five in the afternoon and at eight we had a concert. It was one of the best concerts of the "Madrigal" choir, at the famous Palazzo della Musica, in a great setting, in an extraordinary support as an environment.

What other moments of excellence do you remember?

When I was in Paris, there was a UNESCO anniversary, a big gala and the presenter was Ustinov, and the moment he heard us singing, he stopped next to me, I was at the piano, giving the tone, a little bit into the harlequin of the stage and he was absolutely stuck with one foot in the air, stuck. He turned to me and asked: Where did you come from? Of course the West, in those years, did not expect such an inexplicable artistic capacity of genius to emerge from a communist country, because Marin Constantin was a genius, no question about it. In order to achieve such a result, there were ultimately technical matters, but Marin did not go a millimeter over them. In terms of homogeneity between the parts, of balance, in no way did he admit a 'museum-like' presentation, as he put it, that is to say without this emotional, sensitive charge. Another great thing he did, and which all of us who were blessed to have had dealings with him enjoyed, was the idea that a performer, an instrumentalist, cannot become famous and be a great instrumentalist if he confines himself to a single repertoire. So Maestro Marin tackled absolutely all repertoire directions, everything that was written for the choir, starting from pre-classical music, that is Baroque music, going through Byzantine music, that is from a totally different direction and style and way of interpretation, reaching contemporary music and vocal-instrumental music, so he covered the whole repertoire.

I imagine it takes a lot of inner strength and focus to juggle such different repertoires simultaneously, sometimes even in the same concert. How did you manage it?

In order to do so, he had a great discovery, which was called psycho-technique. That's what Maestro Marin called it. Because it is very difficult in two minutes of applause between two pieces, for example, to go from the deepest mourning to an overflowing joy in the most sincere and most sincere and most assumed way without these continuous exercises, so to pass from one state to another with such ease is not very simple. Or all this has meant practice, practice, practice. At one point I rehearsed the Suite from Oaș by Dariu Pop, four bars, 48 times. Until they came out the way Maestro Marin wanted, he didn't make the slightest compromise, he didn't back down a millimeter. All this superb life has meant for us as a country, going from us as individuals, I am referring to this cultural exchange between Romania and the rest of the world, when we made Romanian music internationally known, from the most ancient times to the latest contemporary creations and vice versa, bringing from abroad to Romania, in addition to pre-classical music and contemporary music and so on.

If you had to identify one of your fondest memories, what would it be?

Perhaps the most beautiful memory remains the carol concert I gave in Bucharest, in 1966, when the doors of the Radio Hall were really smashed, because people were more than eager for something like that, after the communist put their knees on everything that meant spirituality and religion. When people left the concert - I have said it many times, but it is worth saying it again - with the last two verses of Colindița by Monția: We've arrived the holy day/ When carols are sung. Now, to experience something like that, you really need a life in which each year was worth twenty. It's hard for me to understand how Marin Constantin could be 100 years old, it's hard for me to understand how I am 82, but it has been a more than splendid, fulfilled life and I have not lived in vain.