The Romanian Mozart Society
Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music
Sigismund Toduță Doctoral School
International Virtual Symposium
Mozart Today
Friday, 25 November 2022
Chair: Christophe Alvarez
Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music, Cluj-Napoca
1.00 pm
Annick Fiaschi-Dubois – Keynote speaker
Côte d’Azur University, Nice
Mozart, héritier de la tragédie en musique
(Mozart, heir of tragedy in music)
1:30 pm
Aurelia Vișovan
Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg
Mozart through the eyes of Hummel. A fresh look at two of Mozart’s most cherished keyboard concertos
2.00 pm
Adriana Bera
Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music, Cluj-Napoca
Do we really need Mozart’s music today?
2:30 pm
Elena Maria Șorban
Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music, Cluj-Napoca
Mozart pentru copii – repere în viața culturală românească (1970-2020)
(Mozart for Children – Landmarks in Romanian Cultural Life (1970-2020))
3:00 pm
Dalma-Lidia Toadere
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Designing and Presenting a Magic Flute for Children
3:30 pm
Cezara Petrescu, Alexandru Petrescu
George Enescu University of Arts, Iași
„Flautul fermecat”, între tradițional și neconvențional
(“The Magic Flute”, between traditional and unconventional)
4:00 pm
Nathan Mondry
Cornell University, Ithaca New York
Mozart Piano Concerti: First steps in Cadenza Creation
Biographies
Annick Fiaschi-Dubois – Keynote speaker
Annick Fiaschi-Dubois is a lecturer at the University of Côte d’Azur. She defended a thesis in Musicology on the Sacred Stories of M. A. Charpentier which won the ADRERUS Prize (Best European thesis in Humanities), then spent a year as a Lecturer at the University of Oxford (School of Music) and another year at the Villa Médicis as a Resident Art Historian, she is also a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. Passionate about the popularisation of music, she hosts and records a weekly music programme “Contrepoint” on RCF (96.8 and podcast), the numbers of which are placed on the “You Tube” site “Contrepoint La Musique-Annick Fiaschi-Dubois”.
Her research focuses on 17th century French music and its relationship with Italy, rhetoric, the staging of speech and musical gesture in the scenic forms of the Baroque age: “When music contains dramatic gesture or the composer as director of speech: the work of Marc Antoine Charpentier and J. B. Lully, examples of a dramatic gesture in the music of the Baroque period. B. Lully, typical examples “, Colloquium ” Les Mise en scène de la parole aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles “, monthly seminar of the Centre de Recherche interdisciplinaire sur l’Age Baroque, MARENBAR, March 1997, revised and enlarged for the Colloquium, December 2000, Texts gathered by B. Louvat-Molozay and G. Siouffi, Montpellier, Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée, May 2007, pp. 249-273/ ” Le Mariage forcé (Molière/Lully) ou La Comédie-Ballet à l’épreuve de l’Histoire : Une Apogée oubliée de l’Interdisciplinarité “, Actes du Colloque international ” Les Arts de la scène à l’épreuve de l’Histoire, les objets et les méthodes de l’historiographie des spectacles produits sur la scène française (1635-1906) “, Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, 12-14 mars 2009, pub. Dir. Martin (R.) et Nordera (M.), Paris, Champion, 2011, pp. 305-321/ ” Les danses chantées dans la Médée de Marc Antoine Charpentier : un alphabet du corps perdu “, Colloque ” Penser l’art du geste en résonance entre les arts et les cultures “, CNRS, Pairs IReMus, Creops, CEAC, HiCSA, Lyon IAO, June 2016, pub. Paris, L’Harmattan, 2017/ “Et le verbe s’est fait chair : La Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo d’E. de Cavalieri: Le Grand Théâtre du Corps”, 6e Rencontres de Bournazel ” Chair et bonne chère à la Renaissance ” , 2017, Pub. Presse Universitaire de Montpellier, 2019.
Since 2018, she has been working on a book ” Madame de Sévigné, Lettres sur la Musique ” (1200 pages) presented at the Sorbonne in June 2022, to be published by Champion Slatkine, Paris, in February 2023, which allowed her to obtain a Habilitation to direct Research.
Aurelia Vișovan
Aurelia Vişovan is an internationally acclaimed Romanian pianist, harpsichordist and fortepianist, winner of the Musica Antiqua Competition Brugge (fortepiano) in 2019. She is currently a piano professor at the University for Music in Nuremberg. Miss Vișovan has performed concerts in halls such as the Großer Saal of the Berliner Philharmonie, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, BOZAR, Auditorio de Zaragoza, Brucknerhaus Linz, Casa da Musica Porto, Musikverein Vienna, and was a soloist with the Philharmonisches Kammerorchester Dresden, the Romanian Radio Chamber Orchestra, the Seto Philharmonic Orchestra, Das Sinfonieorchester Berlin, among others. In 2017, she performed the world premiere of the Piano Concerto by George Enescu. Her CD recordings for Ricercar, Passacaille, Berlin Classics and KNS Classical present her on both modern piano and historical instruments. She has won over 25 competition prizes, among them the 1st Prize in the Santa Cecilia Piano Competition in Porto, the 5th Prize in the Takamatsu Piano Competition and the 2nd prize in the Paola Bernardi Harpsichord Competition in Bologna. Aurelia Vișovan has studied with Adriana Bera, Monica Chifor and Gerda Türk in her native country and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna with Martin Hughes (piano) and Gordon Murray (harpsichord); in 2021 she obtained a doctor title with a thesis focused on historical keyboard instruments.
Adriana Bera
Adriana Bera graduated from the Bucharest Conservatory, in the piano class of Professor Gabriel Amiraș. She is a laureate of several national competitions, and in 1979 she won a medal at the International Piano Competition in Athens. In 1991 she was awarded by the Union of Performers, Choreographers and Music Critics for her performance of the complete Mozart Piano Sonatas. She has played as a soloist with the main symphony orchestras in Romania and has given recitals in Germany, Switzerland, and Finland. She has given master classes in Romania, Germany and at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. He has made recordings for the Romanian Radio and has appeared in musical broadcasts on Romanian Television. Her pedagogical career took place at the “George Enescu” Conservatory in Iasi and at the “Gheorghe Dima” Music Academy in Cluj. Her students have distinguished themselves in concerts and competitions both in Romania and abroad. From 2001 to 2016 she was president of the Romanian Mozart Society and director of the International Mozart Festival in Cluj-Napoca. In 2012 she was awarded the Prize of the Mozart Society of Saxony – Germany. In 2006 she obtained a doctorate in music with a thesis on Mozart’s Piano Sonatas, and since 2017 she is a member of the “Sigismund Toduță” Doctoral School of the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima”.
Elena Maria Șorban
Elena Maria Șorban is a Romanian researcher and university professor of music history at the “Gheorghe Dima” National Academy of Music and the “Babeș-Bolyai” University in Cluj. Her PhD treats Western plainchant in medieval Transylvania. Her habilitation debates the topic of academic vs. public musicology. Her fields of interest also include the modern and contemporary music and its didactical approaches. She received grants from the Kodály Institute Hungary, the German Academic Exchange Service DAAD, the National University of Music Bucharest, the EU Erasmus Program, and the Paul Sacher Foundation Basel. She lectured as a guest in Budapest, Lisbon, Ljubljana, St. Petersburg, a. o. She is part of the organizational boards of the European Early Music Festival and Summer University in Miercurea Ciuc, Romania, and Musica suprimata Berlin. She is a member of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, the Romanian Mozart Society, the Sigismund Toduță Foundation, Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Mittel- und Osteuropäische Musikgeschichte Leipzig, CESEM at Universidade Nova, Lisbon.
Dalma-Lidia Toadere
Dalma-Lidia Toadere studied conducting at the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima” with professors Petre Sbârcea, Victor Dumănescu and Ciprian Para. She began an early career as a conductor, appearing at the baton of several orchestras and choirs in Romania. Since her master’s degree, she has worked as a conductor-moderator of concerts for children within the educational program “Do Re Mi Start!” of the Academy. Her interest in this field led her to research aspects of the educational concert for children also in the framework of his doctoral studies. In 2021 she published the book “Musical mediation in the children’s concert” with MediaMusica Publishing House. From 2012 to dates she has conducted and moderated more than 100 concerts and performances for children in collaboration with numerous philharmonics and opera houses in Romania. She is currently a teaching assistant at Babeș-Bolyai University (Faculty of Reformed Theology and Music). In the academic year 2021-2022 she gave a series of lectures at the Department of Artistic Mediation and Music of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
Cezara Petrescu
Pianist Cezara Petrescu is an assistant professor at the National University of Arts “George Enescu” in Iasi. She studied at the “George Enescu” Conservatory in Iasi with Adriana Bera (piano) and Gheorghe Rus (chamber music), completing her training at the “Gheorghe Dima” Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca where she obtained a PhD in Music. Her specialization in the field of accompaniment is based on 30 years of teaching experience in higher artistic education, on a post-doctoral fellowship at the Musical Institute for Doctoral Advanced Studies (Bucharest), on his collaboration with the Romanian National Opera of Iasi (1987-2001) and the Opera of Brasov (2001-2004), on repeated participation in national and international competitions and festivals, on master classes given by renowned performers, including Viorica Cortez, Marina Krilovici, Maria Slătinaru-Nistor, Mariana Nicolesco, Larisa Gergieva, Eleonora Pacetti, Vlad Iftinca, Boiko Tzvetanov, Orlin Anastassov, Alexander Walker, Andreas Weller. She has been awarded individual prizes in numerous national competitions and has provided musical preparation and accompaniment for top-ranked opera productions in competitions such as the Opera Fringe Festival Bucharest and the Iasi Independent Opera Festival. She has given recitals and performances at the Romanian Opera in Iasi, at the musical theatres of Brasov and Constanța, at the “George Enescu” Philharmonic in Bucharest, the “Moldova” Philharmonic in Iasi, the philharmonics of Brasov and Sibiu, at the “George Enescu” National Museum. She has made recordings for radio and CD, the Romanian repertoire for voice and piano being the focus of her activity. In parallel, she carries out a rich scientific activity – books, articles, participation in scientific events.
Alexandru Petrescu
Alexandru-Radu Petrescu is an assistant professor at the National University of Arts “George Enescu” in Iasi. He is a graduate of the same university (Singing) and of the National University of Music in Bucharest (Musical Theatre Direction). He obtained a Doctorate in Theatre (Artistic Direction) at the “George Enescu” University of Arts in Iasi. He began his solo career at the Romanian National Opera in Iași, and in about 20 years of activity he has portrayed more than 40 characters in performances on the stages of operas and opera houses in the country and in artistic tours in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg, Republic of Moldova. His directorial work includes works from various genres: opera, operetta, musicals, recitals, and didactic creations. He was awarded the Prize of the Union of Music Critics at the National Competition “Mihail Jora”, the First Prize at the Opera Fringe Festival (Bucharest) and received the Diploma of Excellence at Euroinvent (Iași) for the volume Directing Logics. He is constantly active in publishing and scientific research (volumes, studies and articles, participation in scientific conferences). He initiated and coordinated, as festival manager, the Festival of Independent Operas in Iasi, a project of great importance for the development of musical performance in Romania. He has made radio broadcasts, is a guest host of cultural shows on various radio and television stations, and his performances are broadcast on various media channels.
Nathan Mondry
A professional organist, harpsichordist and fortepianist with international recognition as an improviser and composer, Nathan Mondry is a first-year D.M.A. student in the Keyboard Studies program at Cornell University. After completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano Performance at the University of Michigan, Nathan earned a Master’s Degree in Harpsichord Performance and an Artist Diploma in Organ Performance at McGill University, followed by a Master’s Degree in Historical Improvisation at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. Nathan is the recipient of numerous prizes, including a Special Prize at the First International Competition for Basso Continuo and Partimento Realization at Katowice (2019), a First Prize (with Arnie Tanimoto) at the Bach-Abel Competition (2018), and a prize for composition at the International Competition for Organ Composition in Pordenone (2019).As a rising improvisation specialist, he covers a range of styles from as early as the 15th and 16th centuries to the present day; collaborations include with La Cetra Barockorchester (2018) and a silent film accompaniment concert sponsored by the Birds Eye Jazz Club Basel (2019). Furthermore, he has been commissioned to reconstruct and compose original works for various musicians and organizations, including the Projet Myrelingues of the Association Ephémère classique in France, Les Idées heureuses in Montreal, and historical bassoonist Andrew Burn in Basel. Nathan is also an active chamber musician; his group Les Barocudas, based in Montreal, released an album last year, La Peste, which was nominated for a Juno Award.
Abstracts
Annick Fiaschi-Dubois – Keynote speaker
W. A. Mozart, héritier de la Tragédie en Musique
W. A. Mozart stayed in Paris, the cultural capital of Europe and the leading centre of French-language opera “invented” by Molière, Ph. Quinault and J. B. Lully, transformed by J. Ph. Rameau and reformed by Ch. W. Gluck, whose Iphigenia in Aulis the young Salzburg composer could hear. W. A. Mozart met Baron Grimm and Mme d’Épinay, played and composed for the Duc de Guînes and the Concert Spirituel, met the great Mannheim soloists (Wendling, Ramm, Punto, Ritter) and the famous tenor A. Raaf, discussed with Fr. Raaf, discussed with Fr. J. Gossec, then in charge of the Concert des Amateurs, hopes to apply for the position of organist at Versailles and sympathises with J. G. Noverre, ballet master of the opera, for whom he composes Les Petits Riens. When the Elector of Bavaria commissioned him two years later to write Idomeneo, a Seria opera for which he had access to experienced voices, an orchestra of virtuosos and a professional ballet, W. A. Mozart, who knew that he would never return to Salzburg and that the commissions he could receive would benefit greatly from speaking French as well as Italian, remembered what he had heard in Paris a short while earlier, and signed a revolutionary work that was the heir to tragedy in music and that would henceforth revolutionise his way of thinking about the operatic arts.
Aurelia Vișovan
Mozart through the eyes of Hummel. A fresh look at two of Mozart’s most cherished keyboard concertos
The seven arrangements of Mozartian piano concertos made by Hummel for a chamber music setting (piano, flute, violin and cello) represent much more than an adaptation of the music to make it more accessible to small scale performances. Through their highly embellished solo part, they allow us a fascinating glimpse into the performance practices of the classical and early romantic eras. Hummel has spent two years of his childhood studying with Mozart and living in his house in Vienna; it can be assumed that his deep knowledge of Mozart’s music and his repeated experiences listening to Mozart perform have allowed him to provide us, in his arrangements, with a version which would have been in accordance with the composer’s desires and expectations from the performer. In this presentation I aim to take a brief comparative look at Hummel’s version and Mozart’s original text. I will be discussing in particular the two concertos in minor keys: D minor, K.466 and C minor, K.491, using my own interpretative experience after having performed and recorded the two works both in the original version and in Hummel’s transcribed one.
Adriana Bera
Do we really need Mozart’s music today?
I have noticed lately a steady decline in interest in classical music (CM), not only among the public but even among students preparing to become professional musicians. It seems that CM as part of culture in the traditional sense of the word is incompatible with the values on which modern society is based, and thus condemned to a gradual disappearance. In this paper, I am trying to point out some ways in which something could be changed, presenting first some strategies adopted by different cultural entities to attract people to CM, the most important being the educational concerts. I insist further on aspects of the training of future professional musicians, with a focus on Mozart’s music, on the place it has in their education. I emphasize the necessity of a different approach to his music, freer and more creative, and at the same time, more informed. Performers must be attracted to this music by understanding it and feeling free when they play it. That would transform every concert in an exciting experience both for themselves and public, and will create the need to re-enact that experience.
Elena Maria Șorban
Mozart pentru copii – repere în viața culturală românească (1970-2020)
(Mozart for Children – Landmarks in Romanian Cultural Life (1970-2020))
During communism, music history communication was both self-censored by authors and officially censored. Still, Mozart was a more comfortable subject than Bach. In the 1970s, educational concerts began to be held in Bucharest and Cluj, following the model of Leonard Bernstein, whose Young People’s Concerts were transmitted by the Romanian state television. In Cluj, such events were organized by the Conservatory (the Music Academy of nowadays). The country-wide probably most influential product about the prodigy child was an LP in Romanian,”Mozart’s Childhood”. After 1990, both the political and the internet revolution changed our cultural landscape. Most children’s books and educational performances on music chose Mozart as a theme. My inquiry tries to find out their strengths and weaknesses and the causes of such. The final question is what the Romanian Mozart Society could do to improve its educational impact country-wide.
Dalma-Lidia Toadere
Designing and Presenting a Magic Flute for Children
Mozart’s Magic Flute is one of the operas most often presented for children, from the lavish production of the Metropolitan Opera to modest performances with a storyteller and a few singers with piano accompaniment. For our elementary school project at the Hungarian Opera in Cluj, there were tight time and budget limits. Having these constraints, we decided to explore the possibilities to make a virtue out of the necessity, and came up with a creative solution for a performance with both educational and entertainment value. Reducing the cast to six main characters and placing the orchestra on stage also allowed us to introduce some of the instruments and the role of the conductor. In a prologue, the conductor introduces children to the magical world of opera, using strategies of music and theatre mediation. The main part of the performance includes the most famous arias and duets of the six characters, with Papageno narrating the storyline from his own perspective. The conductor intervenes to set right some of Papageno’s boasting, and involves the audience, making them participate in two moments of the plot. The preparation of the children by teachers who participated in a workshop I led, enhanced their concert experience.
Cezara Petrescu, Alexandru Petrescu
„Flautul fermecat”, între tradițional și neconvențional
(“The Magic Flute”, between traditional and unconventional)
Each generation feels the need to express itself and define its profile within the society in which it lives. In the age of globalisation, appealing to the defining features of nationhood is increasingly difficult. The story of the Enchanted Flute singspiel allowed a directorial reinterpretation that aimed both to demonstrate the universality of Mozart’s creation and to read in a personal key the multitude of symbols, meanings and messages it contains. The originality of the staging we are presenting consists in the transposition of the narrative thread into a local context, using a specific symbolism, which overlaps and complements that of the opera, and resorting to the interpretation of the work in Romanian. The familiar cultural references facilitated the reception of Mozart’s music, which, in an unconventional staging, revealed new meanings. From a musical point of view, the version we produced followed the stylistic demands and traditional stages of interpretative investigation. The main challenge for the performers was to keep the interpretation at the level of a “current classicism”, independent of the unconventional directorial vision. The aim of our presentation is precisely to emphasize the possibility of successfully harmonising unconventional staging with sublime music, which must not be contaminated by dubious ephemeral fashions.
Nathan Mondry
Mozart Piano Concerti: First steps in Cadenza Creation
What if composing or improvising a cadenza for a Mozart concerto was not an act of genius or divine inspiration, but easy and broadly learnable? As the historical improvisation and composition movements gain credibility throughout the modern music world, the return to “original” cadenza traditions in the past few decades has enabled modern keyboardists a chance to forge new connections with familiar concerti. Although there are hurdles to recreating an improvised genre, the surviving examples written by Mozart, alongside guidance from relevant treatises of CPE Bach and Türk, offer a blueprint from which all manner of cadenza can be generated. By tracing the evolution of the classical cadenza from its roots in the baroque da capo aria, I reverse engineer how to construct a cadenza, starting with the cadential 6/4 and working backwards. In the course of mapping a skeletal form and delineating the cadenza’s broad parameters drawn from Mozart, I present idiomatic figurations and expositional strategies while defining some of the “rules” for connecting the opening and closing materials. Following a sampled analysis of Mozart cadenzas, I will demonstrate how to take themes and motifs from an individual concerto movement and integrate these generic elements into one’s own practice, whether for private enjoyment or professional engagement.
