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Interview with pianist Teo Gheorghiu

Wednesday, 23 October 2024 , ora 13.54
 

Teo Gheorghiu, you perform tonight with the National Radio Orchestra and conductor Rumon Gamba. What are your feelings on your return to Romania and what are your feelings about Romanian music?

Beautiful feelings. This way I can discover the country of my parents and still speak Romanian, see nature, but also the cities - Timisoara, Cluj, Bucharest. I've always listened to Romanian music, Enescu, or music played my lautari - a bit of everything. I've also played Enescu's Rhapsody I - of course it's for orchestra, but I've also tried to do what I can with two hands - but also Béla Bartók, who traveled a lot in Romania and wrote down songs from here and was also born in Sânnicolau Mare. So, I have good feelings!


How was the first rehearsal with the orchestra and conductor Rumon Gamba? How did you construct the performance of the Concerto in A minor by Robert Schumann?

I would say it was a very inspired rehearsal. I took all the liberties, we listened to each other very well. It's a romantic concerto, so we can play with the agogica a bit and I think it will be a very expressive concerto. We get on very well!


Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto is also the work you debuted at the Tonhalle in Zurich in 2004. Do you think your perception of the work has changed since then?

Yes, very much. Life changes and it's reflected in the music. Now I'm 20 years older, I've lived, I've played a lot of romantic and Schumann pieces... And when I listen to Schumann as I played it in 2004, it's very different. I have a greater dimension of the work today.


Because you played in the movie "Vitus", as a young pianist, I would ask you how would you describe this experience? Is the studio recording perhaps similar to the hours spent in front of the camera?

No, because the filming took two months, and a recording takes two days. On a recording with a concert, with an orchestra, yes, there are a lot of people, but it's very small in comparison. There's a huge crew on the movie set. So, it was a very different experience and I'm very happy that I was able to experience that, to see how a movie is made. We do a lot of rehearsals, that's the same, but the movie is still bigger than that.

I invite you to come to the Sala Radio tonight. I will be performing the solo score of Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto with Rumon Gamba conducting the National Radio Orchestra. It's a wonderful program!

Interview by Ana Sireteanu
Translated by Bianca-Daniela Penaru,
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II
Corrected by Silvia Petrescu