George Enescu and AI

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 10.09.2024, 14:00

The George Enescu International Competition is under way in Bucharest, impressing the music lovers night after night with outstanding artistic moments.

Given that any cultural event, even the well-known ones, wants to draw a wider audience, on the occasion of the 143rd anniversary of composer George Enescu’s birth, ARTEXIM, the organizer of the George Enescu International Festival and Competition, presented this year, for the first time, the immersive show “George Enescu – Poema Română: Immersive Experience”, at the Museum of Immersive New Art, which is intended to be a new series of concerts within the Enescu Festival 2025.

Under this special project, the public is taken on an original audiovisual journey, exploring the life and work of George Enescu, through the lens of the “Romanian Poem”, Enescu’s first work, composed when its author was only 16.

From the very beginning, a video introduces the audience to the atmosphere of a concert hall, where the orchestra starts performing the “Romanian Poem”. Against this musical background, the spectators are transported to the picturesque landscapes of Romania, the colors and textures of nature vibrating in sync with the musical notes. While Enescu’s music unfolds, the landscapes merge and transform into various significant places in the composer’s life, creating a visual biographical collage.

Cristina Uruc, the ARTEXIM manager, talked about the collaboration with Les Ateliers Nomad, who created the virtual experience: “They are visual artists who work with the latest technologies and with artificial intelligence, who train AI and elements created by them to match Enescu’s music and generate new video images. This is exactly what this project is called, an experience, an experiment that together with those from Les Ateliers Nomad we tried to achieve. They have  amazing projects!”

Due to state-of-the-art technologies, viewers are invited  to see, for the first time, photos of Enescu at different stages of his life and career, animated with the help of artificial intelligence. The video mixes scenes that showcase Enescu’s lasting impact on Romanian and international music, exploring his influence on future generations of musicians and composers.

George Enescu – Romanian Poem: Immersive Experience is a new experience that combines history, music and technology to bring to life the world and work of George Enescu.

On this occasion, a new series of concerts was announced, which will take place within the George Enescu International Festival, starting next year, in partnership with JTI – Immersive Experience.

Gilda Lazăr, Corporate Affairs and Communications Director with JTI Romania, the main partner of the Festival, said: “We are part of this event and are reliable partners of many cultural events in Romania. Over the years we have created events and supported events, projects and cultural institutions. When this project was proposed to us, we obviously said yes. Why? Because “Poema Română”/”Romanian Poem” is Enescu’s Opus number 1, because, indeed, it was written in his youth and is addressed to an audience that did not get the chance to hear it. (…) It was not performed for 43 years and when it finally was, in 1990, it was not filmed, for some reason. Only after 10 years did we manage to reconcile with our past and have a new beginning. You know that the Romanian Poem is dedicated to Romania’s Queen Elizabeth. I imagined what it would have been like for a young man at that time, at 16, to realize that he was living in a kingdom. It was like living in a fairy tale, it was beautiful, it was normal to be excited. The presentation of the Romanian Poem for the first time, in Paris, it was a big event. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has in its archive the information sent by the Romanian ambassador to Paris, from that period.”

We mention that a representative fragment from the Romanian Poem was used during the Iron Curtain as a signal for the Radio Free Europe broadcasts, which were addressed to Romanians under the communist regime.

Gilda Lazăr talked about the partnership of JTI and the George Enescu Festival for almost 10 years: “Under the sign of novelty, next year, there will be four concerts, various shows, names like Gigi Căciuleanu or Ruxandra Donose, every Thursday and Friday, at MINA , during the Enescu Festival. This way we will continue a tradition started with the Brâncuşi immersive exhibition, which we also organized with the Art Productin Foundation, a few years ago.”

The next edition of the George Enescu International Festival will take place between August 24 and September 21, 2025, under the High Patronage of the President of Romania. It is a cultural project financed by the Government of Romania through the Ministry of Culture.