"A valuable key to enter the poetic and dramatic heart of Romanian culture."

This performance by the Balanescu Quartet is inspired by the life and voice of legendary Romanian folk singer Maria Tanase. Born in 1913, Tanase achieved legendary status in Romania while she was still alive and even more so after her untimely death in 1963. Maria represents the soul and spirit of all Romanian folk music, and her rich, deep voice makes an indelible mark on the folk tradition of her country and its people. Her dramatic performance style perfectly reflects the cosmopolitan culture of Bucharest in the ′30s and ′40s, often described as the Paris of the East, so much so that the singer is considered by her fans to be Romania′s Edith Piaf.

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Alexander Balanescu - a visionary violinist and composer who has collaborated with all the most important contemporary composers from Philip Glass to Michael Nyman - draws here on his musical and cultural roots. Starting from Tanase′s songs, Balanescu has created new compositions with a very personal language, filtering the Eastern European flavor of those songs through a contemporary musical sensibility that also does not give up to a pop vein.

The performance also makes use of an engaging visual score by Austrian video artist and composer Klaus Obermaier, who brings together archive footage alongside to images of Romania's troubled past, from the period before World War II to the transition to communism including even the 1960s.
Balanescu and Obermaier thus offer us a fine visual and musical performance that is also a discovery of the sounds, colors and atmospheres of Bucharest, the beating heart of all Romanian culture.

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