Vlad Văidean
Vlad Văidean (b. 1992) studied piano at the High School of Arts in Baia Mare, and musicology at the National University of Music in Bucharest (UNMB), under the guidance of Prof. Valentina Sandu-Dediu. In 2015-2016 he received an Erasmus scholarship to the Institut für Musikwissenschaft in Leipzig (Germany). During his studies, he won the first prize in various competitions such as: the UNMBʼs National Student Musicology Contest (2012-2015 and 2017 editions), the National „Mihail Jora” Contest, section for music criticism (2013 and 2014), the Musicology Contest from „Lipatti Days” Festival (2012). He obtained also, in 2017 and 2019, the prizes awarded by the journals published by the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists (UCMR): Actualitatea muzicală (as a young contemporary music critic), respectively Muzica (for musicological study). He participated in national and international symposia in Bucharest, Iași, Craiova, Timișoara, Cluj-Napoca. He has published studies, essays, concert reviews and book reviews in Musicology Today and Acord (journals published by UNMB), Muzica, Actualitatea muzicală and Infinitezimal. In April 2016-June 2018, he wrote program notes for the concerts of the Radio National Orchestras and Choirs in Bucharest. He also wrote two chapters included in the first volume of New Histories of Romanian Musics (Editura Muzicală, Bucharest, 2020); one of these chapters formed the core of his PhD thesis (defensed in January 2023) on the music and personality of George Enescu, which remains his main research interest. He is currently associate teacher at UNMB, a member of the editorial staff of Musicology Today, and a collaborator of the “George Enescu” National Museum.
Supervisors: Prof. univ. dr. DHC Valentina Sandu-Dediu
Supervisors: Prof. univ. dr. DHC Valentina Sandu-Dediu
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ENESCIANA by Vlad Văidean
Of course, read through the lens of the most overpowering aesthetic demand – originality resulting from the anti-romantic rebellion – which reigned in the music of the first half of the 20th century, such preferences, quite blatantly assumed, have a rather disorienting, if not downplaying, effect. One can, however, speak of a hidden radicalism, inherent in Enescu’s style, which consists precisely in the specific interaction that he brought about through this affective assimilation, at first, of the standard of the classical-romantic tradition, according to whose criteria (which he never abolished) not only did he subsequently take over, at the Parisian school, all the enrichments, nuances and „updates”, but he also gradually became aware of the conditioning produced by the folkloric identity. Thus, from the interaction of these great stylistic-cultural layers, a game of contradictions resulted (the quasi-obsessive aspiration towards the dialectical musical movement – an aspiration of academic origin, learned through Viennese schooling – versus the predilection for contemplative dwelling, for the paradoxical fullness of the movement on the spot, a predilection which in fact imposes itself as an intimate conformation of the Enescian temperament), as well as a high level of complexity, comparable to that achieved (but of a completely different semantic charge) in atonal-dodecaphonic music.
I plead for interpreting the idiom of “Enescianism” in a trans-stylistic key, that is, through the prism of a “constellation” of aesthetic categories – memory, reverie, “dor” (longing), evening and/or nocturnal pastoral, the sound of bells – that imprint a unique, typical Enescian model on the sense of musical time and space. They form a “constellation” because they never appear in isolation, but call upon and enhance each other. And the most conducive to the emergence of this “constellation” are the slow parts or sections in Enescu’s music.
The recent publication of her 2014 PhD thesis (as ''George Enescu – Creația pentru pian'', Editura Muzicală, Bucharest, 2022) is but the most recent achievement in what, for the pianist Raluca Știrbăț, seems to have meant an attempt to knowing, highlighting and even salvaging the George Enescu’s heritage from all angles and with all possible means. This is because the book can be seen as part of an impressively laborious and extensive research, including also an important 3-CD album of George Enescu’s complete works for solo piano (2015), the first volume of a new edition of Enescu’s piano works (2016), the coordination of the German translation of Pascal Bentoiu’s ''Capodopere enesciene'', the main Enescian exegesis (2015), and the years-long administrative efforts for the restauration of the house of Enescu’s mother in Mihăileni (inaugurated in 2021).
The book is remarkable for its numerous documentary recalibrations and rectifying or even innovative analytical propositions, all having a declared practical purpose, aiming towards a better comprehension of the performance-related act. Știrbăț even has at times a polemical dialogue with long-time-established approaches or conclusions in the Enescian literature, demonstrating an erudite familiarity with an immense (for many, intimidating) knowledge. Thus, her book acquires a well-established place in the tradition of Enescu specialists; it both possesses the virtues of the shaping landmark and constitutes a starting point, one which all equivalent endeavour, be it musicological or performance-related, will need to take into account.
The Enescian model has not ceased to inspire even beyond the members of that generation, a fact that is amply proved by the oeuvre of Doina Rotaru, who rose to fame in the 1980: its unmistakable character could be explained partly as a possible instance of how Enescian lyricism would have sounded, had it been detached from the matrix of Classical-Romantic tradition, and transplanted instead in the pastel-coloured tissue of extended instrumental techniques specific to the avant-gardist musical idiom. Of course, this is only one of the components of her personal style. It is, however, much valued and assumed by the composer, sometimes even in the form of symbolic references to Enescian quotations, as is the case at the very end of one of Doina Rotaru’s most recent work – the concerto for violin and orchestra Himere [Chimeras].
Papers by Vlad Văidean
Of course, read through the lens of the most overpowering aesthetic demand – originality resulting from the anti-romantic rebellion – which reigned in the music of the first half of the 20th century, such preferences, quite blatantly assumed, have a rather disorienting, if not downplaying, effect. One can, however, speak of a hidden radicalism, inherent in Enescu’s style, which consists precisely in the specific interaction that he brought about through this affective assimilation, at first, of the standard of the classical-romantic tradition, according to whose criteria (which he never abolished) not only did he subsequently take over, at the Parisian school, all the enrichments, nuances and „updates”, but he also gradually became aware of the conditioning produced by the folkloric identity. Thus, from the interaction of these great stylistic-cultural layers, a game of contradictions resulted (the quasi-obsessive aspiration towards the dialectical musical movement – an aspiration of academic origin, learned through Viennese schooling – versus the predilection for contemplative dwelling, for the paradoxical fullness of the movement on the spot, a predilection which in fact imposes itself as an intimate conformation of the Enescian temperament), as well as a high level of complexity, comparable to that achieved (but of a completely different semantic charge) in atonal-dodecaphonic music.
I plead for interpreting the idiom of “Enescianism” in a trans-stylistic key, that is, through the prism of a “constellation” of aesthetic categories – memory, reverie, “dor” (longing), evening and/or nocturnal pastoral, the sound of bells – that imprint a unique, typical Enescian model on the sense of musical time and space. They form a “constellation” because they never appear in isolation, but call upon and enhance each other. And the most conducive to the emergence of this “constellation” are the slow parts or sections in Enescu’s music.
The recent publication of her 2014 PhD thesis (as ''George Enescu – Creația pentru pian'', Editura Muzicală, Bucharest, 2022) is but the most recent achievement in what, for the pianist Raluca Știrbăț, seems to have meant an attempt to knowing, highlighting and even salvaging the George Enescu’s heritage from all angles and with all possible means. This is because the book can be seen as part of an impressively laborious and extensive research, including also an important 3-CD album of George Enescu’s complete works for solo piano (2015), the first volume of a new edition of Enescu’s piano works (2016), the coordination of the German translation of Pascal Bentoiu’s ''Capodopere enesciene'', the main Enescian exegesis (2015), and the years-long administrative efforts for the restauration of the house of Enescu’s mother in Mihăileni (inaugurated in 2021).
The book is remarkable for its numerous documentary recalibrations and rectifying or even innovative analytical propositions, all having a declared practical purpose, aiming towards a better comprehension of the performance-related act. Știrbăț even has at times a polemical dialogue with long-time-established approaches or conclusions in the Enescian literature, demonstrating an erudite familiarity with an immense (for many, intimidating) knowledge. Thus, her book acquires a well-established place in the tradition of Enescu specialists; it both possesses the virtues of the shaping landmark and constitutes a starting point, one which all equivalent endeavour, be it musicological or performance-related, will need to take into account.
The Enescian model has not ceased to inspire even beyond the members of that generation, a fact that is amply proved by the oeuvre of Doina Rotaru, who rose to fame in the 1980: its unmistakable character could be explained partly as a possible instance of how Enescian lyricism would have sounded, had it been detached from the matrix of Classical-Romantic tradition, and transplanted instead in the pastel-coloured tissue of extended instrumental techniques specific to the avant-gardist musical idiom. Of course, this is only one of the components of her personal style. It is, however, much valued and assumed by the composer, sometimes even in the form of symbolic references to Enescian quotations, as is the case at the very end of one of Doina Rotaru’s most recent work – the concerto for violin and orchestra Himere [Chimeras].