Category: Daily Dispatch

In this season when you can’t hear “Transylvania” without imagining a wolf howl, we’ll set aside creepy castles in the Carpathian Mountains for the more congenial sounds of Romania’s concert halls.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll look beyond George Enescu, Romania’s most celebrated musical polymath, to hear music by three of his compatriots, only one of whom managed to achieve recognition beyond the borders of his homeland.

George Stephănescu (1843-1925) was a seminal figure in the development of Romanian opera. He founded the nation’s first opera company in 1885. He is also credited with having composed the first Romanian symphony. Stephănescu conducted at the National Theater and taught at the Bucharest Academy of Music. His “National Overture” of 1876 reflects his patriotic concerns.

By contrast, György Ligeti (1923-2006) was destined to be a bit of an outlier. Born into a Jewish family in an ethnically Hungarian region of Transylvania, Ligeti went on to become one of the most important composers of his generation, but much of his music is in a style that would have been deemed “avant-garde.” However, he also had his playful side. In 1951, he wrote his “Concert românesc” (“Romanian Concerto”), a wholly accessible and little-known work based on actual Romanian folk tunes he had studied at the Folklore Institute in Bucharest. Despite this being one of his most overtly delightful pieces, the work was banned after a single rehearsal in Bucharest and not heard publicly until 1971. “Totalitarian regimes do not like dissonances,” he observed ruefully.

Finally, Paul Constantinescu (1909-1963) was part of a generation of Romanian composers that came of age in the shadow of Enescu. He composed in most musical forms: opera, ballet, oratorio, incidental music, symphonic, chamber and choral music, and music for film, yet he remains little-known in the West. His concertante output includes works for violin, cello, piano and harp, in addition to a concerto for string orchestra. We’ll hear Constantinescu’s Piano Concerto, from 1952.

Children of the night! What music they make.

Go batty for exhumed Romanian classics. The Count invites you to join him in his box, for “Romania Mania,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.