Casademuzicieni.ro

This November has seen the launch of a website named casademuzicieni.ro, a virtual space that facilitates an encounter with Bucharest's musical history.

România Internațional, 27.11.2021, 11:24

This November has seen the launch of a website named casademuzicieni.ro (in English, musicians’ house), a virtual space that facilitates an encounter with Bucharest’s musical history. It’s a project for all ages, inhabitants of Bucharest or from elsewhere, from Romania or abroad, anybody who is interested in hearing the tale of the city. The site has an online guide that invites one on a walk through the old streets of Bucharest, the central area and not only. The stories of the big musicians are building a portrait that is both objective and subjective, strongly imprinted in the cultural and emotional memory of the city. We talked to one of the initiators of the project, Stefan Costache, a producer at Radio Romania Musical, about the birth of this project, about the team and the work behind it.

It’s a project developed by a relatively small group of colleagues and friends, a project that is actually twofold: a bilingual, EN-RO site, named casademuzicieni.ro, and a map implemented with the help of Google Maps, which shows the location of such houses, old or not so old, like the house owned by the great Anton Pann in downtown Bucharest, or the modern blocks where composers like Pascal Bentoiu – probably the best expert in Enescu’s work – lived. The project came to life first of all because it got funding under the program Bucharest, an open city 2021. It actually projects both an objective artistic map of Bucharest, and also a subjective, emotional one, because these houses are more than just objective information from our perspective, of those who live in the city. 9 people have been involved in this project, starting from an idea by my colleague and friend Monica Isacescu. We’ve been running projects like these for 10 years now. We started with Lipatti’, which is also part of the current project. Petre Fugaciu, Ioana Marghita and Maria Monica Bojin, the one who translated the texts posted on the site, have also been part of it. Then, Andreea Chirca, a new collaborator of ours, an architect and PhD student who took care of the applied architectonics part. The site as such was developed graphically by Daniel Ivascu. And, last but not least, the images one can see on the website are the result of the work done by Andra Aron, who trod the streets and photographed all these houses. They are not easy to take, because there are some rigours that must be observed.

Stefan Costache also told us about the unseen work behind the site and gave us some hints about what we are going to find in this online environment:

The fact finding and information gathering work is extremely hard, like that of a detective, but also one that brings lots of satisfaction. First, you have to identify where the big musicians lived, to confirm that info, to find out as much as possible about the relationship between that place and the said musician. We still do not have a feedback on the most searched musicians on this website, but I could anticipate two elements that will determine the popularity of the names searched: the popularity and value of the musician, but also the interest in the architecture of the house that musician lived in. There are three such names that I can think of right now, looking at things from this perspective: George Enescu, always associated with the Cantacuzino Palace, which is now undergoing renovations, Dinu Lipatti, a legendary pianist, loved all over the world, and whose fans travel to Bucharest to see where he lived, and the great Ion Voicu, whose name is connected to that of a beautiful house in downtown Bucharest.

Stefan Costache told us how the site was received in the online environment and shared some of the team’s desires with regard to the future of this musical, architectural and cultural guide to Bucharest:

We were surprised to see that the website was very well received even before it was launched. There is an interest in continuity, and the project as such is interactive. Those who know more about a certain topic are encouraged to provide that info and we mention them, so it’s like a bridgehead now, and we want to extend it as much as we can. We will try to also cover other types of musicians, not just the classical ones, because there are many valuable song writers too and they deserve a place on this site. And of course, we will try to place some memorial plaques on those houses, provided the current owners agree with our idea. (MI)