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Tuesday Night Season

Wednesday, 30 June 2010 , ora 13.12
 
On June 29th 2010 at the Small Concert Hall at the Romanian Athenaeum took place the last concert of the Tuesday Night Season, namely a recital held by two young musicians, violinist Tudor Andrei and pianist John Paul Ekins.

The performance included Jean-Marie Leclair's Violin Sonata in D major, Franz Liszt's Petrarch Sonnet No. 47, Eugene Ysaÿe's Violin Sonata No. 6, François Morel's Deuxième étude de Sonorité, Johannes Brahms's Violin and Piano Sonata no. 2 in A major and Béla Bartók's Romanian Dances.


Tudor Andrei
was born in 1985, in a family of musicians in Bârlad. There he started studying the violin and went to the George Enescu High-school in Bucharest where he studied with professors Beno Schwartzman, Olivia Papa and Laurențiu Onose. Afterwards, he enrolled in a university programme at the National University of Music in Bucharest where he studied only a year. Since 2005, he has been a student of the London Royal Academy of Music where he is studying with violinist Remus Azoiței. The young musician has won numerous awards at both national and international competitions and in 1999 he received the first prize at the Nicolo Paganini Genoa International Violin Competition in Genoa. He has also attended the master classes of violinists Gabriel Croitoru, Liviu Prunaru, Șerban Lupu. In 2005, Tudor Andrei had a concert in Germany. Ever since, he has been holding recitals and concerts in Great Britain at the Royal Academy of Music, at the London Eye, the White Hall, St. John's Square, St. James Church, Duke's Hall and the Romanian Cultural Institute in London. In 2006, the young violinist made his debut at St. Martin's in the Fields, followed by invitations from the European Commission to perform on different occasions, concert which were broadcasted on TV on Rai Uno, BBC, on the European Commission TV network as well as in Romania.

Violinist Tudor Andrei is a member of the Henri Coandă Cultural Foundation and the Remember Enescu Cultural Foundation in Romania and also has his own project within the Românca Society Association in London called Art Group which organizes cultural events featuring Romanian artists from Great Britain.


Pianist John Paul Ekins graduated from the Royal College of Music in London in 2009 where he studied with John Barstow. He has a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to enrol in a university programme. He has had concerts in England, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Romania, Norway, France, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic and his performances have been broadcast on BBC. Having an intense activity in the chamber music field, the young pianist is a member of the Erato Piano Trio who won the Anglo-Czechoslovak Trust Competition and is now recording in Paris the complete piano trios of Joseph Haydn. Pianist John Paul Ekins has won several prestigious international competitions such as the Amy Brant International Pianoforte Competition, the San Sebastian International Competition as well as the Oxford International Piano Festival. Among the stages he has performed are the Symphony Hall in Birmingham, the Wigmore Hall, the Steinway Hall, the St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the Holywell Music Room in Oxford, the Tonhalle Zürich, the Martinù Hall in Prague. John Paul Ekins has attended the master classes of Levon Chilingirian, Bernard Greenhouse, Leonid Gorokhov, Salvatore Accardo, Peter Donohoe, Martino Tirimo, Leslie Howard, Joan Enric Lluna, as well as the Brodsky String Quartet and the Chilingirian Quartet. As soloist, the young musician has collaborated with the Wandsworth Symphony Orchestra, the Ealing Youth Orchestra, the Sutton Symphony Orchestra and has also received a scholarship in Germany to study with pianist Bruno-Leonardo Gelber.

The works for both violin and orchestra were exquisitely performed by the two musicians who proved an extraordinary technique as well as intensity, fluency as well as genuineness of interpretation, qualities which only the most distinguished artists reach. The vision of the two instrumentalists of the works performed had such great effect on the audience that the recital ended in enthusiastic applause. Therefore, the success of this concert brings not only the nostalgia of the end but also the hope that starting from autumn we will enjoy performances at least as good as those of the season which has just ended.

Adriana Nițu
Translated by Georgiana Mîndru and Andreea Velicu
MA students, MTTLC, Bucharest University