Classix Festival

This February, the city of Iasi played host to the Classix Festival

România Internațional, 05.03.2022, 12:02

The city of Iasi, in north-eastern Romania, hosted this February Classix Festival, an event devoted to music lovers, young people in particular, in an attempt to facilitate the return to both classical and contemporary music. An event that brought together concerts, launches and exhibitions, in a hybrid format, adapted to the times we are living in, so participants could attend both offline and online. Anca Spiridon the festivals PR officer, told us more about Classix Festival and what it welcomed its guests with:

“Classix Festival is a classical music festival that we describe as a contemporary classic affair, and adventure that started in Iasi in 2020, and whose main goal is to attract a new audience, through the program selected, the unconventional venues and the related events. The third Classix Festival was held this year between the 13th and the 19th of February, both physically and online. The program included 8 classical music concerts, held in Iasi at the Culture Palace, the Vasile Alexandri National Theatre, the Mihai Eminescu University Library, Bals House and the Literature Museum, and was accompanied by other events, such as 10 courses in craftsmanship, an illustration exhibition, debates, seven film screenings. The program brought together more than 16 artists from 13 countries. The third editions goal was to discover beauty in a feminine and mystic form, full of strength. For instance, many of the pieces included in the program , both classical and contemporary, were composed by women. We maintained the hybrid format of the event, and so the concerts were held both in the concert halls proper, with an allowed capacity of 30%, but all the 8 concerts were broadcast online on the festivals Facebook page and on our partners pages, and they will be available for another month.”

Anca Spiridon also told us about the challenges of this years edition of the festival and its main theme.

“The main challenge was turning Classix into a bigger event, that is extending it from five days to seven and also to properly deal with the complexity of the event. There were 60 artists who came for an event where only 30% of the audience could directly enjoy the concerts in the hall, and that in itself was a big challenge. However, we are aware of the impact in the virtual world, with dozens of thousands of watchers online who had the opportunity to watch this years program, so if we draw the line, it was worth it. We had many foreign guests at the festival, including the Auner Quartet of Austria, the German cellist Gustav Rivinius, the Norwegian pianist Havard Gimse, and the Norwegian violinist Bjarne Magnus Jensen. The themes approached at the third Classix Festival were about feminism in classical music, about authenticity and about genuine emotions. We tried to present beauty in a mystic shape, both sensitive and strong and ready to impress through details.”

In the end of our talk, Anca Spiridon told us about the idea of bringing the young audience closer to classical music through such a festival.

“Something that we learnt at the 2021 edition, during a book launch is that for many of us classical music is like a train that we didnt catch on time. We rarely have the education and the openness to go deeper into it. And for us is a great joy to see that every year young people come for the pleasure of the experience as such, to listen to music and feel it without having any particular musical background or knowledge about a certain genre, composer or performer. And when we see that we manage to come so close to an audience of all ages, and mainly that most of them are young, its a great joy for us and a sign that what we do is the right thing to do. In a world that is getting more digital by the day, feelings, emotions are still important and music plays a big role in that, so we must keep on doing things like these.” (MI)