Bucharest 2011: La Danse de la Chèvre

(http://fge.org.ro/ro/muzicieni/orchestra-simfonica/43-flaut-piccolo.html)

We met flutist Ion Bogdan Stefanescu for the first time by pure chance. We were visiting an exhibition (Watercolors by Olga Morarescu-Marginean) opened at Galateca, a Bucharest art gallery situated not far from the Atheneum. We had just entered the gallery, my cousin and I, he was there talking to the artist. A discussion about art, about ancient and modern artists, about beautiful and ugly art, the place of beauty and the place of ugliness in painting, in music, in poetry.

Olga Morarescu-Marginean was telling about her sources of inspiration: her watercolors are playing between background and foreground, branches of bushes, flowers, little birds, rendered in a diaphanous calligraphy reminding the Chinese hieroglyphs, reminding also the iluminuras from the Middle Age books of prayers; were those birds, or those flowers, the heroes of the artworks, so to speak, or just the support of a sacred text, unseen, while floating around? The splendid Freemantle edition of the Psalms came to my mind.

(Musical Background: Bach, Fugue en Ré Mineur BWV 903, artist Lise de la Salle)

At a certain moment Ion Bogdan Stefanescu said that the following day he would perform at the Atheneum. We had just bought tickets for the concert next day at the Atheneum!

So we met him the next day for the second time. He was now on the stage: a Concerto for Flute, Harp and Orchestra by Mozart. The harpist was Ion Ivan Roncea. They offered an encore, a superb piece by Handel that brought me tears, so beautiful it was.

The program included also one of Haydn's symphonies, and then Eroica, performed with great heart and a formidable sense of keeping the balance in exploring the depths of Beethovenian structures. There is pathos in the musical world of Beethoven, while also a strict rigor. Every note there has its logic, every development. The conductor was Brian Wright.

Here is a piece of incidental music, La Danse de la Chèvre, composed by Arthur Honneger for flute: a good opportunity to meet yourself with the performer, Ion Bogdan Stefanescu. And I dedicate this post to Daniela, my cousin who came from Germany for a few days in Romania.

(video by Ion Bogdan Stefanescu)

La Chèvre se
réveille ...danse
...se repose ...danse encore
enfin fatiguée ... elle se
prépare à dormir

Portrait of Arthur Honegger, Paris, 1944, by Serge Ivanoff
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Honegger-1944.Serge-Ivanoff.jpg)

(Musica Nova)

(Bucuresti)