Tickets for the twentieth George Enescu Festival, now available for purchase

The most important local classical music festival and classical international competition and one of the biggest in Eastern Europe, George Enescu Festival, has announced its programme for the 2011 edition and tickets have been officially put on sale. The festival will take place between September 1 and 25 2011, at several locations across Bucharest: The Romanian Athenaeum, Sala Palatului, Sala Radio, Bucharest National Opera, Bucharest National Music University and the Festival’s Square.

The work of the one who is regarded as the greatest of all Romanian composers, George Enescu, remains central to the programme, as it has since the Festival’s foundation in 1958, organizers announce. Enescu’s legacy and lasting influence on Romanian music surfaces throughout the programme, in the form of his compositions and reflected in works by artists born since his death in 1955, as is the case of Livia Teodorescu-Ciocanea, Carmen Carneci and Iancu Dumitrescu.

The George Enescu Festival has once again secured a stellar cast of orchestras, ensembles and artists for its 20th edition. Its “Great Orchestras of the World” strand opens on September 1 with Enescu’s First Symphony and Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony performed by the Residentie Orkest and Christian Badea. It continues on September 8 when the London Symphony Orchestra performs Constantin Silvestri’s Prelude and Fugue No.2, Glazunov’s A minor Violin Concerto (with Nicola Benedetti) and Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in Bucharest’s Palace Grand Hall. The series unfolds with two compelling programmes from the Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev (11 & 12 September), the second including Enescu’s substantial Symphony No.3 performed in company with the Academic Choir of the Romanian National Radio Society. The Staatskapelle Berlin has programmed Bruckner’s Symphony No.7 and Liszt’s Faust Symphony for 13 & 14 September, each work prefaced by a Mozart piano concerto directed from the keyboard by Daniel Barenboim.
Franz Welser-Möst conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on September 16 in works by Mozart, Enescu and Dvorak, while Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra present Enescu’s Suite No.2 in C major and Prokofiev’s Seventh Symphony on 17 September. Midori joins Petrenko and his Liverpool musicians in Walton’s Violin Concerto.

Other Festival highlights include the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in a programme including Dinu Lipatti’s Sinfonia concertante for two pianos and strings (20 September); period instrument performances by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Il Complesso Barocco and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and stagings of Wagner’s Lohengrin (3 & 6 September) and Enescu’s Oedipe (15 September) by the Bucharest National Opera House. The Festival’s cast of chamber music performers, meanwhile, reads like a Who’s Who of international recitalists, with Boris Berezovsky, Ian Bostridge, the Fine Arts Quartet, Angelika Kirchschlager, Gidon Kremer, Murray Perahia, Yundi and Christian Zacharias among the list of featured artists.“

The festival is organized by Artexim and Arcub and 90 percent of its funding comes from the Romanian government. Tickets may be purchased in the Eventim network, as well as online on www.eventim.ro. They are available on different categories, depending on the series of the events of preference: “Great Orchestras of the World” (fees of RON 40, 50, 65 and 75), “Recitals and chamber music” (fees of RON 65 and 75) “By midnight” (fees of RON 65 and 75), “Opera and ballet” (fees of RON 65 and 75), “World Music” (fees of RON 40 and 50), “21^st century music” (RON 7) and “Enescu and his contemporaries” (RON 7 and RON 10). More information on the festival here.