Romanian concert in Vienna

The Romanian Opera in Bucharest gave a special concert in Vienna celebrating the Romanian scholar Dimitrie Cantemir and the composer Ciprian Porumbescu

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Corina Cristea, 31.07.2023, 14:00

A special event was hosted on Sunday by the Muskiverein Concert Hall in
Vienna as the Romanian Opera in Bucharest gave a concert celebrating the great
composer and violinist Cirpian Porumbescu in a special year devoted to this
acclaimed musician. 2023 marks 170 years since the birth of Cirprian Porumbescu
and 140 years since his death. The famous concert hall hosting the traditional
New Year’s Concert in the Austrian capital thus resounded with the works of the
Romanian composer. The program included works by Ciprian Porumbescu combining tradition
with folk-inspired sacred music: New Moon, the first Romanian operetta, The
Ballad, The Romanian Rhapsody and Our Father. Performing were the
soloists, choir and orchestra of the National Opera in Bucharest conducted by
Daniel Jinga. Gheorghe Zamfir and Maria Coman were the evening’s special
guests. Conductor Daniel Jinga shared his impressions with Radio Romania.

To me, Ciprian Porumbescu’s music was a revelation. I had, of course, an
distorted image of the ‘New Moon operetta, which seemed to echo communist
propaganda. Right now communism is exorcized from Ciprian Porumbescu’s works,
so to speak, and we should preserve this music in its purest form, which the
composer designed long before Romania experienced totalitarianism.

Ciprian Porumbescu’s greatest wish was to create folk-inspired music, which
he succeeded. New Moon is a landmark of Romanian 19th-century
music, a reinterpretation of a popular myth according to which the New Moon
(known in Romanian as ‘Crai Nou’) brings happiness to lovers. The legend was
picked up and carried over in Moldovan traditional villages, and the plot of
the operetta is set in 1851, based on an old local legend centered on a love
story that overcomes all adversity. The operetta is said to combine good mood
with poetic nostalgia and reverie into a genuinely Romanian, refreshing
disposition, carried forth by a simple yet warm music. Understanding
Porumbescu’s ‘New Moon’ consists in putting together origin and composition.
Ciprian Porumbescu’s masterpiece is firmly anchored in the ancestral reservoir
of Romanian spirituality, but at the same time it is a very novel work, a mix
of old music and the novel expression of contemporary music, conductor Daniel
Jinga further added. The Muskiverein Concert Hall in Vienna was fully booked by
Romanians in the Diaspora, who rewarded this emotion-evoking performance with a
standing ovation. (VP)