The Lord Of Romanian Conducting
After almost a century of symphonic music in Romania (as early as in 1846-1848, the first symphonic concerts changed the artistic life of Bucharest), after three quarters of a century since the establishment of the first philharmonic in Bucharest (1868), a magician appeared
A Portrait In Smithereens
At night, when sleep is slow to come in a somewhat strange bed, you listen tensely to any sort of noise and try to decode the shades momentarily cast by car lights on the white of the walls. That is how I realized she was there, waiting on the threshold of the door. You
Echoes: Excerpts From The Farewell Concert
In an obituary published in the Tages Anzeiger of Zurich, Mario Gerteis draws a suggestive portrait of Celibidache in his youth. A nervous fiery ball, halfway between histrionics and insight, between passion and obsession. His dark locks hanging over his face in disorder,
The Last Saint Of Music
Among all 20th-century great Romanian conductors, indubitably the most extravagant, original, paradoxical maestro of the baton remained Sergiu Celibidache. Perhaps only Herbert von Karajan enjoyed the status of absolute star during his life time as the Romanian conductor
Aristide Caradja, Entomologist And Philosopher
Member of the Romanian Academy A Written Report at the Public Meeting on the 20th of April 1945 In every social group, may that be family, social class, nation, village, city, region, country, in every institution or social organization, an elite is automatically and spontaneously
Aristide Caradja, Princeps Biologorum Romaniae
I did not meet the great, indefatigable entomologist Aristide Caradja (1861-1955), but everything I have found out about him from firsthand sources has helped me understand he was a unique personality, an absolutely fascinating man. It is undoubtedly an indirect kind of
Virgil Cioflec
Virgil Cioflec, later to become a writer and a collector, stands out amongst the moral and financial supporters of the initiators and founders of Artistic Youth Society (December 1901). With some of its founders, Gheorghe Petraşcu, Ştefan Popescu, Kimon Loghi, Ipolit Strâmbulescu
Gogu Georgescu And Gică Petrescu
On some days I feel universal when listening to Hora în căruţă (Jig in the Cart); I can even picture a cart then, all its joints rattling among the frozen missiles of the world. I get dizzy and a teardrop warms up the Murmansk under my eyelids. Hora Stacatto (Stacatto
The Architect
Emil Popescu was an architect. His specialty was the oil factories and we can say, without any exaggeration, that wherever in the country an oil factory had been built in the last five or six years, one could easily tell it was the work of architect Popescu's skilled
The Way To The Wall
excerpt During such hours, hundreds of hours, was the final thought born. Sitting like that, like a murky statue, between the bed panel and the door, so that Florica, when she opened the door, did it carefully, not to hit him. But he didn't move an inch and the chair
The Erotic Arms Race
A young man learning of how Les Fleurs du Mal was condemned for obscenity during Napoleon III's uptight times can only be left speechless if he has happened to read Baudelaire. For the young generations of today, the poet's depiction of lesbian delights appears
The Lord Of The Baton In the Land Of The Delta
If you had the job of a customs officer in the Danube's ports at the end of the 19th century, this meant that you had to go from Sulina to Galaţi and from Giurgiu to Corabia and, to be sure, Leonte Georgescu was not spared such compulsory travels required by his position;