Among the special guests from the country and abroad that you will applaud in the first 3 months of 2023, on the stage of the Radio Hall, there are artists who have built an extraordinary careers on the great stages of the world: conductors Frédéric Chaslin, Toufic Maatouk, Christian Badea, Stefan Geiger, Cristian Mandeal, Ralf Sochaczewsky, soprano Valentina Nafornița, pianists Alexei Volodin, Constantin Sandu and Eva Garet, flutist Ion Bogdan Ștefănescu, violinist Ioana Cristina Goicea and violist Răzvan Popovici. You will also applaud the well-known soloists of the Radio România Orchestras and Choirs in the coming months at Sala Radio: violinists Alexandru Tomescu and Gabriel Croitoru, cellist Răzvan Suma and pianist Horia Mihail.

Lilian Staicu, director of Radio România Orchestras and Choirs. He is the first guest of the week in Perpetuum mobile. Welcome.

Thank you for invitation. It's good to see you.

We are talking about the resumption of the Sala Radio season. The first concert already took place last week, on Friday, it marked the Day of National Culture. Tonight we are talking about the first concert of the Radio Chamber Orchestra this year, Andrei Ioniță is the guest of the evening. He will perform as a double pianist and cellist. How did he react to this proposal?

Indeed, almost everyone knows the cellist Andrei Ioniță, winner of the Tchaikovsky competition, but very few people know that Andrei Ioniță is also a very good pianist and I took advantage of this, I proposed him to try a double pose, he reacted absolutely wonderfully, and here it comes to fruition in this concert where you will hear him in a Mozart concerto playing the piano and in a Dvorak concerto playing the cello. I think it is one of the events of this season. The audience reacted as such, so I don't think there are any more tickets for this evening, but you can listen to the concert live on Radio Romania Muzical and Radio Romania Cultural, as always.

Concert no. 23 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for piano and orchestra and Concerto no. 1 by Joseph Haydn for cello and orchestra are the two performed by Andrei Ioniță, as you said, this evening from 19.00, live on Radio România Muzical. On Friday there will be a concert in which the guest is the flautist Matei Ioachimescu.

Exactly. Matei Ioachimescu in a brilliant program, a brilliant program with Fantezia Bizet/Borne on themes from the opera Carmen, a Concertino de Chaminade and the program is completed with works by Tchaikovsky and Weber under the baton of a young but very promising Finnish Kalle Kuusava. He is in Bucharest for the first time, but he is one of the very good representatives of the Finnish conducting school. As we know, the world is full of young Finnish conductors and Kalle Kuusava I think is one of those who will explode in the international artistic world. So, we invite you on Friday evening to this concert at Sala Radio and of course to the one next week where the star of the evening will be the soprano Valentina Nafornița seconded from the conductor's desk by Laurent Wagner, a program with opera arias, of course and the choir will bring the input, so I invite you next Friday as well, because it's an absolutely wonderful concert, a brilliant program. Valentina Nafornița has not been on the Radio Hall stage for some time, so a real event is foreshadowed.

February is coming. What does the schedule of Radio Romania Orchestras and Choirs look like in the second month of 2023?

Different and I hope exciting, in the sense that Frederic Chaslin, David Crescenzi, Cristian Mandeal, Peter Feranec will be on stage as conductors, they are names that have an absolutely impressive calling cards, and the programs are also interesting. There will be a concert on February 17th conducted by David Crescenzi with the Radio Academic Choir, selections and famous choruses from the opera, but Frederic Chaslin will also have a program with Tchaikovsky's Pathetic symphony and the Violin and Viola Concerto, the Concert Symphony for Violin and Viola by Mozart with Alexandru Tomescu and Răzvan Popovici soloists. And the other ensembles will be present, I also mentioned the Radio Choir, but also the Popular Music Orchestra has its usual monthly concerts and the Big Band, which, as you noted, has two concerts a month from this autumn. The first concert will be on February 9, I think, the jazz concert of the year, I don't want to say big words, but I think that's how it's foreshadowed. Alex Sipiagin is invited, he will indeed record a disc in our studios before with his band and the Radio Big Band, so on February 9th we are waiting for you at Sala Radio for this sensational concert, trumpeter Alex Sipiagin and we will continue with a concert on February 24 built like that for Dragobete.

2023 is also Rachmaninov's year. It is the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth. Will we find his works in the Sala Radio programme?

Of course. The beginning of the Rachmaninoff year will take place on March 3rd with the National Radio Orchestra conducted by Stefan Geiger, the soloist being the pianist Alexei Volodin, he will perform the Concert no. 2 by Rachmaninoff. It's the Sala Radio debut of the Rachmaninoff year as I said. During the year there will be many more important works by the musician and because I was saying from March I would like to remind you that an important British conductor, Christopher Warren Green, will come to the lectern of the Radio Chamber Orchestra for the first time, then we will continue with Jonathan Bloxham , who conducted a wonderful end-of-season concert of the Radio Chamber Orchestra last year, returns on March 15, then a young conductor with a wonderful international career, the British Jessica Cottis, will conduct the March 17th concert of the National Radio Orchestra, soloist Constantin Sandu, in Concert no. 1 by Liszt and the program will also include the famous Petrushka by Stravinsky, and then Claus Peter Flor, Toufik Maatouk and Christian Badea will conclude the tour of the great conductors at Sala Radio. Toufik Maatouk will present an opera in concert with the Radio Chamber Orchestra and soloists of the Paris Opera Academy, Cosi fan tutte by Mozart in March, opera in concert and as I said, Christian Badea, at the end of March, the soloist isyoung pianist Eva Garret in Concert no. 1 by Tchaikovsky.

So, important programs are in the first three months of 2023, presented by highly acclaimed musicians.

I would also like to remind you that on March 8th we will have a gift for ladies and gentlemen. It will be a surprise, I don't want to reveal it yet, but I think that in a week or two whoever accesses the orchestreradio.ro website will be able to find out what is the surprise prepared by the Radio Big Band for March 8th.

So, orchestreradio.ro is the site you must access in the coming period. There you can also find information on tickets for the concerts at Sala Radio. Liliana Staicu, director of Radio Romania Orchestras and Choirs, thank you for your presence in Perpetuum mobile and good luck in this second part of the season.

Thank you very much.