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Igudesman & Joo at the Romanian Athenaeum…
… or about one of music’s aims, namely that of
producing joy and boisterous chinks. In a perfect interpretation.
The ring
of the well known mobile cell phone brand became the leitmotif of the play that
opened the programme.
The duel between Mozart’s music and the James
Bond movie theme had a trailing end – in fact, it did not even start, because
both of them had been performed simultaneously – and the sonorous result turned
out to be an amazing one.
A Steinway piano that opens with a credit card,
whose code – entered by the pianist with his back turned, who covers the
ivories with his coat tail, that is the keyboard – is the theme of the Symphony of Destiny. So that this piano may work, you
have to play Twinkle,
twinkle little star
– beginners level and, afterwards, the
first five bars from Grieg’s Concerto – advanced level.
The performance of one of Bach’s Sonatas for Solo Violin under different versions – such as
‘à la antiqua’, accompanied by the sound made by the gramophone’s needle – artificially produced by the sound director.
Mozart’s Rondo à la turca changed from the somewhat melancholic melody
into a soaring one, owing to the utilization of a major tonality instead of the
original, minor one, and afterwards performed in a coherent ‘Balkan
Yugoslav-Oriental Asian-Turkish in a ying-yang Chinese style and Hebrew
tai-chi’ version.
The All by myself song in which the singer literally bemoans the
sorrow of being alone.
I have also found out that the viola is not
bigger than the violin – it is just an optical illusion: the instrument is not
the one that is big, but rather the violinist's head is small.
Translated by Cristina Neculai and Andreea Velicu
MA Students, MTTLC, University of Bucharest