1999 Romania and Moldova

Sep 25, 1999 – Oct 8, 1999
Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Chisinau, Bacau, Iași, Timișoara

Festival info

Start: Sep 25, 1999

End: Oct 8, 1999

Locations: Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Chisinau, Bacau, Iași, Timișoara

Hosting member(s)

Description
Description

From contemporaneous reviews of the festival

“[T]he ISCM Festival in Romania and Moldavia … marks a turning point – in scholarly jargon “a change in paradigms” – in the international relations of the more than forty countries throughout Europe, America, and Asia, in which the ISCM is active: specifically, at least a partial change in one of the central elements in carrying out a festival and its program. This was the first ISCM Festival in which the International Jury for the selection of its program – that is, dispensed with it legitimately. For in the course of several years, the Romanian section had propagandized the idea of an unjuried festival and worked to create the necessary majority in favour of the idea among ISCM members in order to alter the official organizational Rules of Procedure.

“[The Festival] exhibits a group of characteristics that clearly distinguish it from other ISCM Festivals. First there is the surprisingly high interpretational quality of the large orchestras, ensembles, and soloists in the country.”

– Reinhard Oehlschlägel, “For the First Time: Unjuried”
World New Music Magazine, Issue #10 (September 2000), pp. 67, 71.

“[T]he complete program of concerts totalled two hundred and one works of [a] hundred and seventy-five composers from forty-nine countries … The concert schedule was quite dense (sometimes suffocating, turning into marathon-like concerts lasting until very late in the night), thirty-nine performances and recitals were grouped and disposed in twenty-nine concerts of which seven were symphonic; three were for chamber orchestra, fourteen were chamber music, there were electro-acoustic and multi-media concerts; in addition, there was one choir concert and one instrumental theatre performance.”

– Cristian Marina, “‘Searching for Dracula’s Castle’ – Unfinished”
World New Music Magazine, Issue #10, p. 64.

Programme information
Locations