The musician will conduct the "George Enescu" Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday and Friday, the 3^rd and 4^th of April. The programme contains works by Toru Takemitsu, Dmitri Shostakovich and Johannes Brahms, and the soloist is going to be pianist Boris Giltburg.

Mr. Leo Hussain, you are back this week at the music stand of the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra and I would like to ask you how would you describe the evolution of your relationship with the ensemble?

We already have quite a long history together and we know each other quite well, but what is very nice is that now I can come back and work with the orchestra on pieces that are familiar to me and to the members of the ensemble, but which we have not played together. So, this week we are discovering this new working context. I've also been reunited with colleagues I haven't seen for a couple of years and I think our relationship has always been alive.

In your experience, how does Takemitsu's music strike the public, and what are the main characteristics of "The Three Film Scores" that you are presenting this week?

This is a difficult question to answer because in each place, the audience is very different. I have performed Takemitsu's music in many, many countries - in California, in the UK, in France - but the reason I wanted to include these three pieces in the program is the very nature of the pieces. Because it's music made for movies, they are very descriptive and, in a way, it's not pure music. For example, we have the three pieces, each belonging to a different soundtrack, belonging to movies made in the Japanese film school of the 60s and 70s. The first one is about a boxer from Puerto Rico who came to New York and it's fragmented, with jazz and blues influences, the last one is catchy but also a bit sad, a kind of waltz with a more melancholic side. And the middle section, the heart of the work, is, I would say, the hardest to listen to, because of the main theme which is disturbing, in accord to the movie's plot, set after the moment of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima. We have a vignette there of about three minutes which is beautiful, of course, but at the same time very tragic and very deep in feeling. I think these three works are very accessible, given that they are individual pieces that depict very clear emotional stories.

You have not yet started rehearsing with the soloist, pianist Boris Giltburg, but you have collaborated together on other occasions and I would like to ask you to tell us how you remember those experiences?

We played the Gershwin Concerto together in Salzburg a couple of times a couple of years ago and it was an absolutely wonderful experience, so since then we have been looking for a new opportunity to work together again and I'm glad we can do it in Bucharest. Boris is an extraordinary pianist, extraordinarily intelligent, but someone who carries his intelligence very modestly. When he comes on stage you see a musician and not a genius, but in fact he is a genius musician.

What was the principle behind the program?

We have those two great works, Brahms's Second Symphony and Shostakovich's Concerto No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra, both of which are very serene, bright and cheerful. But both Brahms and Shostakovich were not famous for their, shall we say, optimistic compositions. When we think of Shostakovich we imagine music that has a more bitter, acidic side, and when we think of Brahms -it is massive, intense, more cerebral in a way. In contrast, the works that I have chosen are, one could say, the most cheerful ones that they composed. But, of course, we also encounter other feelings; Shostakovich's music always has "teeth", and in Brahms we encounter at some point that feeling of regret, melancholy, something slightly sad. I think that Shostakovich makes a very good transition from Takemitsu, which is exhilarating music, but also has obvious asperities, in a way similar to Shostakovich's concerto - and then we continue with Brahms. So, I would say it's a very bright program, but not superficial.