George Enescu’s Music Will Open the Season IN Both Bucharest and Vienna

The George Enescu festival and international symphonic music contest reached its 17th edition and is to open on 4 November, at Sala Palatului, with a concert conducted by Horia Andreescu.

Important orchestras will take part in the festival, as the National Radio Orchestra, the "Stradivari" Quartet and the "Schubert" Ensemble, or soloists like Dimitri Sitkovetsky, Uto Ughi, Augustin Dumay, or conductor Alexandru Lascae.

Prices for the concerts range from half a million to over one million lei sroughly 30 eurost.

Monday, 5 September, opera goers will see "Oedipus" by George Enescu. The music will be played by the Bucharest Opera House choir and orchestra, and Esa Ruutunnen will hold the leading role. The same evening will take place recital of Julia Migenes in the "LA Argentina-Tango" show, on the stage of the National Theatre in Bucharest. Other locations will host ballet performances.

On Tuesday, the Russian ballet company "Eifman" will play "Giselle Rouge", while on 12 September jazz lovers will enjoy the music of the "Nigel Kennedy Jazz Project".

Tuesday 13 September is the day to listen to the Straatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Myung-Whun Chung. While the famous Romanian clarinet player Aurelian Octav Popa will perform on 16 September along the "Voces" Quartet.

The last day of the international competition will be on 10September, with the violin players competing at 10 a.m. and the piano players competing at 1 p.m.

This year a lot of new products will accompany the George Enescu Festival: books, prints of the original work of Enescu and DVDs with films of previous editions of the Festival.

Outdoors performances will stay high on the agenda of the festival, with video and live symphonic and jazz music being performed in the market square.

Also, the lobby of the Athenaeum in Bucharest will host a photo exhibition of George Enescu’s pictures.

Seven CDs called "Faces of Genius" were printed by the Ministry of Culture and will be on sale at the festival, with part of the funds going to the relief fund benefiting the flood victims in Romania.

The Romanian public television TVR1 will broadcast on 5 November the opening of the music season at the Opera in Vienna, Austria, with the music of "Oedipus", by George Enescu. sIoan, trans. notet Holender, the director of the State Opera in Vienna sof Romanian origin, and also the director of the Festival in Bucharest, trans. notet, said this was a new opportunity to provide food for souls. He also said that having no canto contests this year was not necessarily bad for the international competition, since Enescu’s music was less suited for human voice performances".