On Wednesday, the 22^nd of May, Vlad Maistorovici will play a double role-that of composer and conductor of the Radio Chamber Orchestra, as part of the International Week of New Music. With this opportunity, the musician spoke with our colleague, Ioana Țintea:

Vlad Maistorovici, your work Little harmonic tesseract for chamber orchestra will have its Romanian premiere on Wednesday, at the Radio Hall, during the International Week of New Music. How would you describe this piece to those who are going to listen to it, whether they'll be in the audience or watch it live on Radio România Muzical?

It's the kind of work that brings back old styles. It's based on a pretty famous chorale, which was credited to Bach for a long time, but experts recently discovered that it was likely composed by his contemporary, J. D. Heinichen. So it's a little harmonic labyrinth, pretty well-known to the general audience. It's not only for music lovers, but also for those who love Maurits Cornelis Escher's art. I composed this work for last year's anniversary, as part of the project called "Metamorphosis after MC Escher" that I undertook in The Hague. The subtitle of this piece is actually "Hyperbolization for chamber orchestra". So the audience is invited to visualize with their mind's eye this multidimensional universe of a tesseract.

What do you think about the association between your work and the other three composed by Octavian Nemescu, Mihai Măniceanu and Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea? Two of them will be premiering for the first time ever. Is there a common thread?

The program is really diverse and will take the audience ona whole musical adventure. This certainly also has to do with the ethos of the International Week of New Music festival. I think that this program will allow the audience to listen to the musicians on stage and see just how versatile they are.

The program starts with the work "The Inner Ladder" by Octavian Nemescu, a masterpiece of sound, which pays homage to courage in the face of oppression. The work is an abstract drama, and, in this drama between the acoustic instruments present on stage and the electronic element, we also glimpse sonorities that are familiar to the general audience. This program follows a contemporary musical adventure, but one which is still open to the well-established repertoire.

Mihai Măniceanu's Percussion Concerto follows the structure of a three-part classical concerto, having also a slower part. We have the chance to follow a race between the lush world of percussion instruments, which is very diverse-a multiverse, isn't it?-and that of orchestral sounds, which are very dynamic and energic.

The concert wraps up with the "L'Isolement" Cantata by Livia Teodorescu-Ciocănea. According to the author, it is a meta-modernist approach with contemporary resources and sounds as well as a romantic air. Even if she is presenting quite exotic and colorful sounds to the audience, there is still a romantic air which conveys a lot of emotion.

What's a conductor's most important duty when it comes to presenting a work for the first time?

It is an opportunity for us as performers to discover uncharted territories. Our first channel of communication with the author is certainly the score, but when you have the chance to meet the composer in person, you can go beyond the surface and find out more easily what hides behind the coded message in the score. I think that our responsibility as performers is that of picking up and assimilating a lot of information in a rather short time. And now is the time for me to say how glad I am to be working with my colleagues from the Radio Chamber Orchestra. We have a very focused and receptive way of working and, as I was saying, this kind of program requires a lot of information being assimilated and then expressed in a final performance. This is not a challenge, but an adventure of preparing such a program that, on the one hand, requires a lot of concentration, but, on the other hand, allows the musicians to fully showcase their versatility on stage.

Photo: Giorgia Bertazzi