Expoziția este realizată cu sprijinul Institutului Cultural Român. Potrivit unui comunicat de presă transmis de ICR, “Expoziția este concepută de artist nu doar ca o experiență emoțională, ci ca o abordare site-specific în dialog cu prestigioasa colecție de sculpturi antice găzduită la Muzeul Național Roman Palazzo Altemps și povestește, prin 15 lucrări și instalații, drumul parcurs de artist în studiul său expresiv, privind relația dialectică cu memoria, în acel etern dualism care îi animă existența de zi cu zi.”

„Încă de la începutul carierei mele, am fost interesat de relația dintre artă și trecut. Un domeniu anume de care sunt foarte atașat este arheologia. Pentru mine, ca artist, contactul direct cu descoperirile trecutului (în muzee și situri arheologice) este o sursă neprețuită de întrebări, informații și inspirație permanentă; o modalitate de a căuta răspunsuri ridicând vălurile și asociind aceste mărturii și informații cu capodopere ale istoriei artei (picturi, sculpturi, scrieri)ˮ.

Mircea Cantor

“Câștigător al Premiului „Marcel Duchampˮ (2011) și al Premiului Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard (2004), Mircea Cantor este apreciat la nivel internațional pentru reflecția sa constantă asupra temei libertății și condiției umane. Prin ritmuri și simetrii repetate, reușește să creeze o poezie vizuală care îi determină pe privitori să mediteze asupra limitelor și posibilităților existenței umane, implicând, interceptând și transpunând sublimarea vieții cotidiene în metafore de mare impact.”, se mai arată în comunicatul ICR.

Mircea Cantor este stabilit la Paris de peste 20 de ani. Cultura la dubă l-a vizitat în 2021 și i-am spus povestea pe larg, într-un reportaj din cadrul seriei Săptămâna Franței. Citiți povestea sa aici.

_{Dacă vrei să susții Cultura la dubă, poți face o donație lunară AICI.}

_{Cultura la dubă nu acceptă nicio formă de asociere cu jocuri de noroc sau partide politice}

The post Mircea Cantor va avea o expoziție solo la Museo Nazionale Romano appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Festivalul se desfășoară între datele 15-25 februarie, iar prima proiecție a filmului românesc va avea loc pe 17 februarie, la Delphi Filmpalast.

Andrei Cohn este la al treilea lungmetraj, după Acasă la Tata (2015) și Arest (2019).

Acțiunea filmului se petrece în săptămâna Mare, undeva pe la 1900, în România. Relația tensionată dintre cârciumarul evreu Leiba și Gheorghe, servitorul său, ajunge la un punct culminant care aduce despărțirea lor. Mândru și violent, Gheorghe îi promite lui Leiba răzbunare în noaptea de Paști. Amenințarea lui Gheorghe, în mediul antisemit al satului românesc de la începutul secolului al XX-lea, îl tulbură pe Leiba. Derapajul lui psihologic îl transformă din victimă în agresor.

Filmul este o adaptare liberă a nuvelei “O Făclie de Paște” de Ion Luca Caragiale.

Din distribuție fac parte actorii Doru Nicolae Bem, Nicoleta Lefter, Ciprian Chiricheș, Ana Ciontea, Dinu Gheorghe Mario, Iulian Postelnicu, Cristina Flutur, Dragoș Olaru.

La ediția de anul acesta a festivalului, în cadrul programului Berlinale Talents, mai este o prezență din România: directoarea de imagine Ana Drăghici, cunoscută pentru imaginea unor filme precum Oameni de Treabă (2022), Otto Barbarul (2020) sau Două Lozuri (2016.)

The post Azi începe Festivalul de Film de la Berlin. Un film românesc este prezent în cadrul secțiunii Forum appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

Although he has not lived in Romania since he was 17, Cristian Măcelaru returns to his native country every time he has the chance, passes his knowledge and love for music to the young generation, brings his family to discover its roots and dreams of a better future for Romanians.

As of this year, Măcelaru is also the man who leads the destiny of the George Enescu International Festival, at least from an artistic point of view. He accepted, as Artistic Director of the Festival, a six-year term for 3 editions (2023, 2025, and 2027) and wants to bring people closer to the beauty of music and culture.

Among the concerts that he conducted during the Festival and those in Paris, he takes every opportunity to be a simple spectator. He can be seen in the concert halls alone or together with his family.

Cristian Măcelaru speaks with warmth and hope about art and the joy he lives through music is seen and felt when he conducts. His joy, is, in fact, contagious.

„It is very important to realize that music alone is not what changes people. Music is the one that brings us together, we are the ones who decide what we do with that gathering.”

Cristian Măcelaru

Two years after the interview in Paris, I met him in the heart of the George Enescu Festival, at the Romanian Athenaeum. In the interview below, he talks about the decisions behind the event, the feelings during concerts, the relationship with music, the norms of society, and, most importantly, about the universe in which we all should bring ideas, information and hope for our children.

***

This year you are the Artistic Director of the George Enescu Festival, conductor and also part of the audience, I`ve seen you many times in the concert hall. When do you feel the biggest emotions?

I can honestly say, I don’t have emotions at all. First of all, as a conductor, I have no emotions because I know the quality of the artistic product that the musicians in the orchestra bring, and I am full of energy anticipating and knowing how the audience will react. 

It is not emotion, it is a positive energy that wakes me up each morning because I can’t wait to get to the concert. 

Then, as a spectator, I’m very happy. In fact, this is the first time I can attend several events as a spectator. I’ve been to the festival as part of the audience before, but I’ve attended one or two concerts. 

Now I feel like a kid in a candy store because I choose any concert I want to see, and I meet many musicians I work with. It`s like we`re at a friendly reunion singing to each other.

And that’s just a small side of the festival, actually. These artists who come here intersect with each other and this is how beautiful ideas in art are born.

As an artistic director, I have emotions in the sense that I want to completely reach the end, as I planned, without too many barriers. When you have 3,500 artists from all over the world traveling to the festival, of course, there are problems that arise. There are things we need to rearrange every hour and every day.

By the time you took over this term, in what proportion were the artists contracted and the musical program arranged? 

When I took over as artistic director, I can’t say there was anything confirmed. There were a few things in discussion, natural things, even now we have talks for 2025 and 2027, because great orchestras plan 5-6 years ahead, and I do the same.

And then, there were discussions all the time, but everything was confirmed after I took over.

In terms of the program, does each orchestra choose its repertoire, or does the festival impose what is played, so that there is general coherence in the event for a month?

First of all, let’s think about the history of the festival. In 1958 it’s purpose was to promote Enescu’s music. This was the term of the festival. Since then, it has continued to promote Enescu’s music, but in a more global context.

This year, in the festival, 39 compositions of Enescu are presented and we continue this effort. That’s why we negotiate with all the orchestras that come.

Many orchestras are on a tour of their own, and at the festival, they stop for one or two days.

It is impossible to impose a different repertoire on each orchestra, it is negotiated. But all the orchestras that come to the festival know in advance that they have to interpret a work by Enescu. 

When the orchestras come to the negotiation, they ask „which work of Enescu is not already taken?” For example, I proposed to the Vienna Philarmonic to perform one of Enescu’s suites, and they accepted, then they realized that there was not enough time for rehearsal of the Suite in Romania. And then they integrated Suite No.1 of Enescu, a 30-minute work, in their entire tour. 

I was at the Graffenegg Festival in Vienna and the Vienna Philharmonic played Enescu’s Suite. And this made me so happy because our effort to make the composer George Enescu known to the whole world is beginning to catch strong roots.

Beyond Enescu`s music, did you have any preferences for certain works or composers that you wanted to promote in the program?

Of course. First of all, it is the anniversary year of György Ligeti, a composer born on the Romanian territory, highly appreciated especially in the 20th century, when he lived. That’s why Ligeti’s music has a special role in the festival.

Then, I really want to promote Bartók’s music, because he is another composer that many are afraid to listen to because they don’t know what will discover.

Bartók has long been considered an extraordinary modernist, but I find in his music such a deep and beautiful romance! Even when he is very modern, still he has such a profound element. It’s like when we look in Romanian folklore and see these extraordinary masks, then something like the Merry Cemetery, all the fantastic things. This is Bartók’s music and must be understood in this context.

I promote Bartók’s music everywhere because it speaks so deeply about the culture I come from.

He was born in Sânnicolau Mare, I was born in Timișoara, 20 or so kilometres away, his music comes from the same land I come from. I identify very much with the gestures that Bartók writes in music, that’s why his music is promoted in the festival.

As an audience member, have you been particularly impressed by any concert?

I can say that all of them impress me, because I don’t listen to music in a comparative way, looking for the superlative, but I am interested in the person-person relationship. Music is the language through which artists communicate. But that relationship, human to human, is actually the beautiful thing in art.

Art is such a personal thing that there can’t be a climax that makes you lesser if you don’t reach it.

And then, is each person’s experience during the concert the most important?

Exactly.

And what you bring defines a lot of the success of the concert, not just what the artist brings. The artist always brings something of his own, something personal. But what I bring, so that we can connect in the concert, that’s what the success of the concert depends a lot on.

I can say, from my memories of the last few days, that to see Maestro Zubin Mehta conducting an entire opera at the age of 90, without once looking at the score, doing everything with technical perfection from a conducting point of view, is simply a miracle.

Likewise, Mahler’s 9th Symphony, with Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony, was of such beauty and deep feeling! Especially knowing that this is the last time they will play with him as the ensemble’s conductor, there are elements beyond the music that make the concert very special.

It was also quite special what happened at the Tonhalle Orchestra concert in Zurich at the Palace Hall, when despite the Ro Alert alarms, the artists continued to play in an extraordinary way and be above those moments. And at the end, the audience applauded for minutes on end to Dvořák’s 9th Symphony.

Right. I was there. The audience also wanted to show their appreciation for the fact that the artists didn’t stop the concert.

I talked to the orchestra after the concert and they said “unfortunately, we also saw the Ro Alert at half-time, but because it was in Romanian, we didn’t understand what it was and, being in proximity to the war in Ukraine, we didn’t know what was going on, is it a fire alarm, has Romania been invaded?”.

Of course, after the concert, we talked internally to establish a more defined protocol, to let people know how to turn that phone off, so they would stop calling.

It’s to be applauded how the artists reacted to those sounds.

I saw that during the break you went to congratulate Andrei Ioniță. What did you say to him?

Of course, I played with Andrei, he is very appreciated in Romania, he is our hero, a special and extraordinary talent, with a lightness on the instrument that is appreciated by those who know how difficult it is to play the cello. They really know what a talent Andrei is. He is a very great talent and I told him exactly that.

You and your family went to a few concerts. How do the kids feel about the festival?

They love it. Unfortunately, because they started school in Paris, they couldn’t stay to see more of the festival. They like it very much in Romania, they have their favorite places to go, playgrounds or Cărturești, they go there since they were very young.

I also try to teach them a little how to listen, what to look for and I enjoy it when they ask me questions. In Germany, when I did The Woodcarved Prince, I did it with the subtitles of the story. It’s a ballet with a story behind it, in which Bartók wrote the music in such a way that Wagner did in his operas. There are musical brassy motifs that coincide with certain important words in the story.

And when the children came here, they were afraid that without subtitles they wouldn’t understand the story. And we made a video where we explained those musical motifs for them to recognize, we watched the video together, told them the story one more time and that’s how they came to the concert.

It is very necessary that parents who bring their children to the concert take 5-10 minutes beforehand, I make this effort like any parent. Depending on how you introduce the kids to the concert, to a work, their experience will be very different.

That’s what interests me most, that people discover the same beauty at the concert that I do.

A little knowledge helps you understand music and listen to it differently, so you’ll have a deeper, more beautiful perspective.

In fact, for me, that’s the difference between art and entertainment. In art you have to bring something of yourself to discover beauty. In entertainment you don’t need anything at all except a ticket.

In art, the more you bring in, the wider the universe you discover.

When you took over as artistic director, you said that you wanted very much to open the Enescu Festival to children and young audiences. You have included in the programme a series, for the first time, for children, which is sold out. Do you feel you have achieved what you set out to do?

It’s a successful first step, I say. I will continue to do more in this direction. Maybe some people say “ah, what a good idea, so that in 20-30 years we have a new generation coming to the festival”. Yes, that’s true, but my main interest is that these children and young people who come to the concerts discover culture, discover their relationship with art.

You don’t learn culture from a textbook in school. You don’t learn it by reading about it. Culture is absorbed when you don’t realize you’re absorbing culture. Culture takes time and effort, not just personal effort.

We must provide possibilities and opportunities for these children of ours to be exposed to culture and art. There is a space in society, a universe that is filling up with information, with ideas. If we don’t put ideas and information into that space, someone else will gladly do it.

We need to fill the universe with something good, from which children take what they want. The moment we have a presence in that space, maybe they will take culture.

To what extent do you think art should be related to what is happening in society? It was moving when you dedicated the Second Rhapsody to the victims of the Crevedia explosion and linked the work to the idea of healing. It took on a new meaning.

Music has always been, in fact, the thing that has accompanied everything we have done as humans. The beginning of organized music was to bring people together. Whether it was at a funeral, whether it was at a wedding, whether it was at a natural phenomenon, music has always had that purpose, to bring people together. Then, we are the ones who give the purpose of our gathering.

It’s very important to realize that music alone is not what transforms people. It’s the music that brings us together, it’s we who decide what we do with that gathering. Because there is so much power in 2000-3000 people coming together and listening to the same thing. There is a spiritual power in the universe.

And what we do with that power in the universe can lead to good or it can lead to evil.

It is important to reintroduce music as a catalyst for good. The idea of healing through music is as old as the universe. We need that soul-soothing.

And music like Enescu’s Second Rhapsody was put in a special context and everyone in the hall heard it in a different way than they had heard it before. One thought of 4000 people towards the same thing transforms a universe.

To what extent does clothing still matter at these events nowadays? There is still the impression, at times, that the Enescu Festival is a stiff event, where you have to go dressed up elegantly. I know that your view is a bit different, in the sense that you don’t consider the attire being a prerequisite for attending such a concert.

Elegance itself is up to each individual. I’ve seen people in jeans who are very elegant, and I’ve seen people in suits who are not elegant.

It’s not the clothing itself that gives a person elegance, but elegance comes from within.

For me it doesn’t matter how people are dressed, but there must be a special feeling, an internal elegance when you are face to face with Enescu, Mahler or Beethoven. There has to be a reverence for these geniuses. Not for musicians, not for conductors, but for composers. For me, the composer is the complete genius.

And when I go to concerts in jeans and when I go in a suit, I bring a reverence through internal elegance, which I think is necessary.

For those who only stop at clothes, that’s their understanding, but I hope they can get away from this idea that you have to be dressed a certain way. Reverence is something that has to come from inside, because if it’s not from inside, it’s a false thing and it’s not good.

At what stage are you with the project you have with the French National Orchestra to record the complete operas of Enescu?

We finished recording the first three symphonies and the two rhapsodies, we spent almost 4 weeks, a lot of work. Next comes studio sound editing. And probably next year the records will come out.

Did you feel that you brought the French National Orchestra closer to Enescu with this project?

Yes. And I would say Enescu closer to the French National Orchestra. I don’t know any musician who hasn’t discovered Enescu’s music, who hasn’t been overwhelmed by the beauty, the extraordinary universe that Enescu offers.

Because he is so complex, Enescu requires more than other composers. That’s why there are so many people who haven’t discovered Enescu yet. They’ve heard him, but they haven’t discovered him.

When and how did you discover Enescu?

I discovered him playing his music. And I’ve been obsessed with his music ever since. Enescu must be studied, discovered and understood

In the interview we did together in Paris two years ago, you talked about how important a concert hall would be for Romania. Has there been any progress in discussions with the Romanian authorities on this matter since you became the festival director?

What I can say is that I still haven’t found a person in the government or outside who disagrees with the idea that we need to do something. Everybody has said “oh, it’s necessary.” For 30 years it’s been necessary. But what we haven’t found is a coalition of all the people who need to make the clear decisions.

We did our part, Artexim, Mr Mihai Constantinescu who has been fighting for this for 30 years. They have made a project, but it is not green lit until the end.

Honestly, I can’t even say that there’s a specific person who hasn’t given his consent. No.

It’s such a volatile system, it changes so often, it’s kind of absurd. A project of this magnitude needs continuity. A concert hall can be built in 2-3 years.

But why do you think it doesn’t happen? What is missing?

In my experience, people who have been persuaded and want to do this simply change their position. And then you have to start over with the next guy. The battle has to start from scratch.

I think since you’ve been in talks to take over as director, you have already changed three Ministers of Culture.

Three, that’s right. Not to mention Mr. Mihai Constantinescu, in 33 years he went through about 40 ministers. But it’s not just about ministers, it’s about a system.

A train conductor, no matter how much he wants to go forward, if every person and every screw in that train is not put in the right place, the train will not leave the station.

The post Cristian Măcelaru: „In art, you must bring something from yourself to discover beauty. In entertainment, you don’t need anything, just a ticket.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

Tatiana Țîbuleac was born in Moldova, she’s a Romanian, the wife of a British-Swiss citizen and she lives in Paris for 13 years. Through her books she has shown more than any passport could, that she is a complex writer, who can bring to live characters from different parts of Europe.

In 2019, her writing career, completely unplanned, took a surprising turn, even for herself. She won the European Union Literature Award for her novel The glass garden, her second book, and next to her name, they put “Romania.”

“I’m Romanian. I introduce myself as a Romanian writer. I’m from Moldova, but everywhere I went with my books, I introduced myself as a Romanian writer. I find it normal. I don’t believe in this separation. Writers from Moldova have always wanted to be a part of Romanian literature.”

And Tatiana Țîbuleac has managed that without even trying. She has never lived in Romania, but she writes in Romanian and is trying to teach the language to her children, born and raised in the French capital.

“My children speak 4 languages – English, French, Romanian and Russian. I like that they discovered reading in Romanian and I think that already is a good way.

I set my ambition not to get any other citizenship, I could have gotten a British or a Swiss citizenship, my husband being British-Swiss. But in the end, I’m still a Romanian in Paris.

Many Romanians try to cut all their ties. To me it wasn’t the case. Probably my desire to go to Romania from Moldova was so strong, that I say proudly that I’m a Romanian.

It’s my small love declaration, I think.”

Tatiana was born in 1978 in Chișinău. Both her parents worked in press, her father as a journalist, her mother as a corrector at a newspaper. And their daughter walked in their footsteps, even though her n’t father would have wanted a more secure path for her, such as medical school or law school.

“I used to love what my father was doing, but back then, journalism was harder to do that what I did. He used to tell me that I will freeze in the cold, that I will be sleeping in attics. In those days, you would sleep in someone’s attic, and do the story at the farm, the school, the kindergarten.

And I chose journalism, eventually. Those were some good years, I liked it a lot. The only issue I had was when I transferred to TV and I had to be a news anchor, I didn’t like that.”

She worked in written press for three years, then she joined Pro TV Chișinău, the first commercial and independent station in Moldova. There she was a reporter, an editor, but also a news anchor.

“I did the first stories of migrants from Moldova in Italy. I remember meeting people who had slept for a half of year tied up in trees, because they couldn’t sleep on the ground, so the police wouldn’t catch them.

There were touching moments for me and I think that is where I learned to listen to people.”

“I learned a lot from journalism and I have never regretted those years. I think that I would still be practicing it, if I hadn’t come to another country.”

After working in press, she collaborated with UNICEF and discovered people from different countries, who have broadened her horizons. She met her husband and moved with him to Paris.

“I’ve always felt like an outsider in Paris. It’s a difficult relationship with Paris and I don’t know why, because it’s a lovely city.

But there are places where you can’t or you won’t fit in. On the other hand, this is what made me feel good in Paris. I’ve never had an issue whether the French will see me as their own or not.”

“Today I’m here, tomorrow I won’t be, I take the best from today. Right now I fell very good in France.”

She didn’t know that her walks on the small Paris roads would open her path to literature.

“I had never felt the need to write literature. You can’t feel the need to write when you’re already writing all day long. My work day used to start at 6 a.m. and would end at 11 o’clock in the evening. All day long I would write or edit, I don’t see how I could have started to write a book at home, when I came home to sleep, or watch a movie, rest, do anything but write.

Writing began on this street.”

On Rue Montorgueil, right in the heart of Paris, the first arrondissement, her first writings that were different that her experience in press were being born.

It was in a vivid area, full of cafe’s and boutiques specific to Paris, a few steps from the out-of-the-box Centre Pompidou and Brâncuși Workshop.

“I stardet speaking to a florist at a flower shop here and she had a great story. And I thought of doing something with her story.

And I started writing some short things on Facebook. I wrote about 10 lines there and called it a modern-day fable. It was like child’s play.

And so many people read that thing, that I continued writing these modern-day fables. Then a website created a permanent column with “modern-day fables”, and somebody from that website said that we should put them in a book. And that is how I actually started writing.

That is when this shift occurred, from journalism to literature, although it was not literature yet. I called them fables because they had a moral in the end.

I wrote about a lot of people in this neighborhood. Things have changed now.”

The flower shop closed down, and Tatiana became an internationally appreciated author.

“With “Modern-day Fables” I started to get thousands of messages, more than I’m getting now, with two published books. People identified with the theme and would send me stories, they wanted to be in Modern-day Fables.

I felt somewhat like an impostor, because everyone would say to me “you’re such a kind, gentle, good woman”, and I’m neither kind, nor gentle, nor good. It was the wrong picture.

There was too much kindness around me and I couldn’t handle it. I felt like telling them that I’m not like that, stop writing to me, you’re pissing me off.

And I believe that that is exactly how “Summer”, my first book, came to be. Because “Summer” is exactly the opposite. I think I wanted to show that I am different, in fact. The writing in “Summer” represents me. I am “The Summer”. I am the woman in there. I am the boy, that is how I am.

“Summer” came to be after a summer I spent with my parents. They came to France, the children were small, and we showed them the country.

We went to the exact places that I’ve described in that book. And I, having a complicated relation ship with my father, I felt for the first time that I have somehow forgotten him, seeing him playing with my daughter. My father seemed a beautiful man, interesting, something I had never noticed, because we would always argue.

I had started writing these stories on my blog around that time and I got home and wrote a story that was the basis for the character of the mother in the book. It was a Jewish mother whom I had met at a hotel and she was dying. We spent a few days together, we chatted. We spent some time at the hotel, where she had came with her children, her head was shaved.

When I got home, I started writing her story. But I noticed that there wasn’t an ending to what I was writing, it wasn’t just a post or a story anymore.

I started writing every day, this masculine voice was in my head and I didn’t know what to do with it and I carried on. I wrote it in less than two months. The editor from Moldova Gheorghe Erizanu was visiting then and asked me if I’m writing anything.

And I said “I’m writing a thing, but it’s bizarre, I don’t know who might read it. Nothing llike this has ever been written in Moldova, a story where the child doesn’t love his mother, there’s a lot of hatred there.” And he told me to send it to him. I sent it on a Thursday and on Monday he told me that he was getting it ready for print.”

“The Summer When my Mother’s Eyes Were Green” received in 2018 “The Observatorul Cultural” award for prose and the FILIT award. She then became known throughout Europe after the first translation, in Spanish.

“I had a complicated relation ship with this book. I hated it. I thought that nobody wanted to see it. But we made our peace and now I somewhat miss a little kindness.

Everything is too cynical now. Everybody’s asking me about crisis, evil, death, depression. Now I’m on the other end of things.

In “Summer” I was Tatiana from Paris, in a way. In “Summer” I denied all that Moldova meant. In “Summer” I’m the cosmopolitan woman, living in Paris, connected to England, who knows galleries, paintings, because that is who I am.

I was often asked why I had chosen to write about two Polish and not two Romanians or Moldavians. I also asked myself those questions. And I think that’s how “The Garden” came to be. That’s where I had my revenge, I went back to Chișinău, in the Botanical, in my neighbourhood.”

The novel “The Glass Garden” confirmed and cemented Tatiana Țîbuleac’s success in Romania, as well as the rest of Europe and South America.

It was written, as was “Summer”, in Romanian, language being a character in it’s own, both in the book, and in the life of Tatiana from Chișinău.

“I think that “The Garden” had been in my head forever, it was inside me. With “The Garden” I had this dilemma, whether to write it in Russian or not. Because there were a lot of things coming in my head in Russian, it being the language of my childhood in a way, the language of the city and it was a book about the city, about Chișinău.

But I chose to write it in Romanian and I’m happy that I chose so, because it’s a story about the Romanian language, not the Russian language.

When I wrote this book, I felt that it was a moment of reconciliation between these two languages. Now I would have to re-read it, see how I position myself, because things have changed.

My father was more Rusophobic than I was. That was one of our reasons for arguing. He distanced himself completely from Russian language when we started using the Latin alphabet.

He felt Romanian and dreamt of the unification with Romania. After we started using the Latin alphabet, he didn’t touch Russian literature. He did what many are doing now, during the war.

In my case, it was difficult to separate myself from the Russian language, because I grew up speaking Russian, and he couldn’t understand why I didn’t have this burning hatred towards everything Russian. It sounds bizarre to argue because of language, but there were many cases, we weren’t the only family.”

Meanwhile, her father passed away, and Tatiana left Chișinău a long time ago.

Her family’s history and the region she was born in still follows her, because the war in Ukraine has profound emotional ramifications.

“Our name is Ukrainian, we had relatives in Ukraine. My mother lives in Chișinău. I never thought that I would ever see Russia killing children in Ukraine, given the historical bonds, but it is happening.

In the first month of the war, we were paralised.

For people in Moldova, the war feels different. People are hearing the loud explosions, they have children left for studying, they have vacation homes, they have friends staying with them in Chișinău, because they seek shelter.

To us, this war is much worse. It is the worst. And it is still not over. And it hurts me to see people thinking that it is over or that it’s better now.

I can understand going back to our lives, because you cannot constantly live with someone else’s misfortune, but last week Kiev was bombed again, and the events aren’t even the first ones on the news anymore.

People are vacationing, Europe is in vacation. But the war continues.

I fear tanks going into Chișinău, where my mother lives, but not only that. I fear that we are witnessing a war online and we’re not doing enough. I cannot understand how, in these days, such a war is permitted. Nobody is stopping it.”

When the war began, Tatiana took in her home in Paris some refugees from Ukraine and, for the first time, understood her family’s own past.

“It meant reconnecting to my grandparents past, who were deported, and, more than any trip to Siberia, these months I realized what it actually means to leave your home with a bag, a barefoot child and run. These stories started to take shape for me. My mother was born in a gulag, in Siberia.”

She hasn’t written in this period and she doesn’t believe that art should respond to current themes, but should be an intimate act, which you feel or not.

In fact, she does not necessarily plan on continuing her writing career, but expects things to go on in a natural way, such at it was until now.

“If I’ll write another book, it’s ok, if not, it’s still ok. I don’t want to be tied up by just writing. I want to believe that I can do other things as well.”

She does not live in the center of Paris anymore, but is living a quiet life on the outskirts of the city, where she is gardening and dedicates her time to her children.

“Home is where your family is, I believe. But I feel that I will change many places.”

She is part of an international community, more than a French one, and has a realistic perspective on the country in which she lives.

“Not all French people live like the wealthy in Paris. There are very poor regions in France.

This myth that everyone eats croissants for breakfast in France is not true.

There are families that make as much as middle class families in Romania.

I have not felt the French adversity towards immigrants, but it exists. This is a more open area, where you barely feel it, but the far-right has been on everyone’s lips during these elections. This scares me. I am an immigrant and am part of a community of immigrants.

Having this British side in the family, we saw what was happening with Brexit, when nobody thought that it will happen. When you talked to people, nobody was voting pro-Brexit, but eventually, Brexit happened.”

When she is not dedicating her time to her family, the Romanian writer travels a lot to promote her books. She closely follows Romanian contemporary literature, but says that “I’m not doing so well at the chapter of relation ships with other writers, it’s like a wall there.”

She would want for Romanians to appreciate more their fellow’s performances, and stop self-sabotaging.

She has a skeptical view of the world in which we live, through the prism of the terrible war, but manages to see glimpses of hope in common people.

“I’m not an optimistic person, rather the opposite. But I believe that optimism can be helped through some gestures of solidarity, a warm loaf of bread, a warm coat.”

“I don’t believe that we can live outside of community

I still see the kindness in people. I have seen some good people even in these times. I really don’t like it when someone’s good gestures are being doubted. As long as the gesture es made, for PR or otherwise, it’s a good thing.

I believe that people’s kindness comes out once in a while.”

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Tatiana Țîbuleac, writer: “The world thinks that if someone leaves, they must have a place to call home. In my mind it wasn’t like that.” appeared first on Cultura la dubă.

RO

20 years ago, the great German conductor Kurt Masur, while he was the musical director of the French National Orchestra, was naming as head of the orchestra a young lady violinist, of only 21 years old.

Sarah Nemțanu thus became the youngest concert master in the history of the National French Orchestra, a position she still occupies today.

100% French on paper, Sarah bears a Romanian name – Nemțanu – and has a Romanian-beating heart especially when she visits Romania.

“The first time I came to Romania and I heard people speaking Romanian, I thought everyone was my cousin. (laughing) It was like all the family was there, that was my feeling. I felt home.”

Her story is not only one of an accomplished musician, who has conquered the world’s greatest stages, but also a testimony of a universal Europe, in which millions of families break, in need, from their homes and grow roots in other places, that adopt them and give them wings.

Vladimir Nemțanu, born in Bucharest into a Jewish family, was a concert master in the George Enescu Philharmonic, and his wife had just graduated from canto at the Conservatory when they decided to flee communist Romania, that was under Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorship.

They took advantage of The Most Favored Nation Clause, through which Ceaușescu allowed Romanian Jews to emigrate to Israel and The United States of America, and left for Israel themselves.

After a few months spent there, the two young Romanians were getting a chance in France. He got the position of concert master of the Bordeaux National Orchestra and she was hired at the Bordeaux Opera.

“When they got to France, they started a new life. They had nothing, they lived in a hotel for a while, until they rented an apartment. It really was starting from 0.

There were a few Romanians in the Bordeaux orchestra, there already was a cultural connection between Romania and France. And in the ’70’s, a lot of regional orchestras appeared. There were not so many French musicians, so they were completed by Romanian musicians.

Even to this day, the Romanian musicians communities in European orchestras are impressive. But especially in France, because there is this cultural friendship, there have been so many extraordinary Romanian artists who created in France, such as Ionesco, Enescu, Brâncuși.”

“It is the Latin side that binds Romania to France, our atoms intertwine.”

A year and a half after settling in Bordeaux, Sarah was born into the Nemțanu family.

“I’m the oldest of three children and first learned to speak Romanian at home. Then, when I went to school, French became my first language.

But I would say that until about the age of 12, at home I would speak Romanian. Especially when my grandparents were visiting, about a month every year, we would only speak Romanian. Also, my parents’ entourage was formed exclusively of Romanians.”

Although she was fairly young, Sarah vividly recalls her first visit to Romania.

“I went to Romania with my mother and sister when I was six, I have memories, but they are not nice. It was around 1987, my mother already had a French passport, but she was afraid that they wouldn’t let her get back to France, at the airport.

My memory is of my mother crying in panic. She was questioned: why are you married to a Jew? Why are you living in France and not here? I remember all the questions, it was something very violent for me.

Then, I remember it being cold, winter, a lot of snow. The only pleasant memory is riding the sleigh with my grandfather in Bucharest. That was cool!”

She pronounces the word “sleigh” (săniuță) perfectly in Romanian. More so, even though when we started the interview she said that she will be speaking French, because she does not manage speaking Romanian so well, Sarah mostly answers in the language that her parents taught her when she was a child.

As a child, information about Romania was vague, as it would have been for any other child to understand why her parents had to flee their own country.

“I have this memory of being in the car when Ceaușescu was executed, my mother stopped, turned up the volume and stood still. I knew that they had fled Romania because it was not good, but I didn’t understand why.

On the other hand, I was aware that they were happy in France, with a double culture, that they passed on to us, their children.”

Sarah and Deborah, her sister, took on their father’s passion for violin, while their brother became a jurist.

While Sarah leads the National French Orchestra, as a prime violinist, Deborah Nemțanu is, as well, concert master of the National Chamber Orchestra in Paris.

“I implored my father to teach me violin. He was very passionate, he would study a lot, and when we heard him play, we would run to him.

To me, the violin is like a voice. I’m trying to say something through music, through a universal language, without precise words. And people understand what it wants.

I can’t remember wanting to do anything else.

“The most wonderful thing that our father passed on was to be independent, self-critics, knowing on our own whether what we’re doing is right or not, listen to ourselves, without anyone else telling us that we were off-key.”

From 16, Sarah moved by herself in Paris, where she graduated from the Conservatory. And recently she was made a violin teacher at the prestigious school. She enjoys teaching the youth and says that she got this gift and this joy from her father.

She was also a violin teacher for Melanie Laurent, the actress, for the film Le Concert, directed by Radu Mihăileanu.

Sarah Nemțanu is the one playing the music in the film – Tchaikovsky’s concert for violin and orchestra – and had enormous success, along with the film. Le Monde were saying at the time: “Sarah Nemțanu, the true violinist from The Concert”.

“Radu is very precise, he knows exactly what he wants and what I loved was that he made the entire final scene of the film on the timed rhythm of Tchaikovsky’s concert, he first played the music and built the script based on the musicality of the work.

I had never seen that. Usually, in films, they add the music after the shoot.”

As a head of orchestra, she works directly with Christian Măcelaru, the Romanian musical director of the French National Orchestra. He believes her to be one of the finest violinists of the world, who could easily transition to a solo carrier.

But Sarah loves working in an orchestra and can not see herself doing anything else.

“I knew that I wanted to be a concert master. In my mind, I could’t see myself playing alone. My father was a concert master. When I finished school, I loved going to rehearsals when I knew that the orchestra was also there.

My life philosophy is that we all form a chain in which each is a link, we are very different, but only together we can form this chain.

When we will accept that each has his own personality, then everything will be alright. The main priority is the common good, that of the orchestra.

And I love the orchestra, I love the orchestra repertoire, and it shows and my colleagues see it.

I am both head of the orchestra, and part of it, I’m a crossroad that creates connections and this is owed mainly to my education.”

I ask her how many Romanians there are at the moment in the French National Orchestra and she effortlessly answers:

“- Oana, Teodor, Eduard, so 1,2,3,4.

– 3.

– 4, counting me.

– Do you count yourself?

– Of course. (laughs)”

With a Romanian conductor at the helm and a Romanian-born concert master, the French National Orchestra took on an important project, dedicated to the great Romanian composer George Enescu.

The entire work of Enescu will be recorded during the next 10 years at the prestigious record label Deutsche Grammophon.

“In Enescu’s music you can find images from his childhood, birds singing, a violinist playing on the street.

I believe that George Enescu wrote so that he would never forget his memories and did it in the smallest details regarding folklore.

It is, obviously, also classical composing, savant music. But in his music there is always this transparent veil of folklore, which he managed to integrate.

Romania is making all these great efforts to be a European country in all aspects and I believe that the artists are te first that succeed, artists are the first creating connections between countries. Enescu did this perfectly.

In his music there is a lot of freedom, but it is in a special frame, a deeply personal one. This is truly special at Enescu. And that is how I see freedom. We are free on this Earth, but we are also limited on this planet.”

Last year, Sarah Nemțanu opened the International George Enescu Festival, along with the George Enescu Philharmonic, which her father had led, 44 years prior, as a concert master.

And as of this year, Cristian Măcaleru took the helms of the festival as the artistic director. They both wish for a refreshing of the event, but also more attention to young Romanian musicians.

“The Enescu festival is truly impressive. What I find to be a shame is that there is but one such festival in Romania.”

“All the funding goes to one place. I wouldn’t see a single event once every two years and then nothing. And, as we mentioned the youth, if there were larger investments in the system, I would like to see professors from all over Europe teaching in Romania.

Sure, there is the Enescu Contest, but the stakes there are a prize. Who is helping the young artists for the rest of the year, who is teaching them?

At the Enescu Festival I’ve met wonderful young people, volunteers, staff. The youth want to learn, they are fascinated by the European educational system.

Unfortunately, there are many leaving. The best of the youth are leaving Romania.

Here is where I believe that the Enescu Festival with Cristian Măcelaru as an artistic director will bring changes.

It is an enormous hope. It is something I feel.”

Sarah lives in one of the most bohemian neighborhoods in Paris – Montmartre. She walks daily, on her way home, on the wavy streets that were once walked by the great European artists – Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso or Van Gogh, and is at home in the vivid atmosphere of the place filled with tourists, right next to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

She is the mother of two, a wife and an artist who enjoys live through everything she does. She loves cooking, jogging with her husband and traveling. She lives a typical Parisian life, but equally loves each of her trips to Romania, which she sees as a fundamental part of her identity.

“I’ve went to Romania each of the last 6 years and every time I felt like home. It is something that cannot be explained, can only be felt.

I feel like home, I even took Georges there, my son.

Romania is at a European crossroad, it is a unique country through the fact that it is Latin in the east, and this gives it a special identity and in the same time it is a country of adaptability.

That is why I think many artists leave the country and are very evolved culturally.

And if we were to mention musical particularities, I think that the Romanian style has a certain elegance, something that my father absorbed and passed on.”

Sarah Nemțanu is the result of a family of Romanian migrants in France, in the same way as thousands of children are born in Romanian families overseas, and take on different paths than what their lives would have been, would their parents have stayed in Romania.

Art, in this case, has fundamentally contributed to the conservation of a cultural identity that Romanians carried along in their adoptive countries.

In a world where foul history repeats itself and millions of families are forced to flee from war or dictatorial regimes, Sarah is a believer in the good in everyone, and the power to bring a little light around us, be it through art, or through simple gestures.

“I believe that when you do good and are positive, there is an effect around you. For example, I have some friends that are constantly complaining about Paris taxi drivers, that they’re bad, this and that. I often take a taxi after concerts and I only meet wonderful taxi drivers, really nice.

Once I had a taxi driver that had came to see me at a concert. He was 50 years old and he listened to classical music on the radio, he had just enrolled in music school, to learn an instrument. I invited him to a concert, he came, waited for me at the end and cried.

To me, this is real life. If you do good, keep a positive attitude and don’t let all the negativity in the world influence you, than everything will be better.

***This story is part of the “France Week” series, a Cultura la Dubă project supported by BNP Paribas.

The post Sarah Nemțanu, outstanding French violinist, born from Romanian parents: “To me, the violin is like a voice. “ appeared first on Cultura la dubă.