This evening, I have the pleasure of speaking with composer Dan Dediu, President of the Union of Composers and Musicologists from Romania. Good evening! Welcome back to the Radio România Muzical studio!

Good evening! Thank you for the invitation!

We should tell our listeners, Dan, that we've known each other for a long time.

We were high school classmates.

And when we were setting up this interview, I remembered the moment I first met you. I don't know if you still remember. You had just arrived from Brăila. We stayed for a while in a dormitory.

We stayed in the dormitory together.

Exactly, in the same room. But I remember the moment we walked into that room that had been assigned to us, along with a few other colleagues. We introduced ourselves, and you went straight to your luggage, pulled out some large music notebooks, and asked us very seriously: "So, what kind of music are you composing?" We froze, and I think we told you we were here to study an instrument, not to compose. What I want to know now is - do those composition notebooks still exist?

I still have some of them, yes, I do. But I haven't gone back to flip through them again, because I've always stuck with this habit… I sketch everything in notebooks, because if I write on loose sheets, I end up losing them. So I learned my lesson, and now I have, I think, over 100 sketchbooks where I jot things down. In fact, I write down absolutely everything, anything that crosses my mind, because I never know when it might come in handy. And often, when I run out of ideas or have very few, I go back to my old sketchbooks and fish something out of them.

To briefly look over your activity so far, there are already over 170 compositional opus numbers under your name, along with books, articles, essays, and a remarkable academic career. You're also a talented communicator. I'm thinking of conferences, lectures, TV and radio programs, including here at Radio România Muzical. You've received several national and international awards for composition. You've been honored with numerous distinctions. You're also an artistic director of a festival and, as I mentioned at the beginning, President of the Union of Composers and Musicologists from Romania. Is there anything you would have liked to do but haven't had the chance to?

Ah, yes, of course. There are many things I would have liked to do. First of all, to write even more pieces, because I have material and ideas for many more compositions. I just don't have the time to write them all, and that always leaves me with a bit of regret. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy what I have managed to do, and I hope I'll manage to do more in the future.

Actually, I really love music, and I love talking about music, I love reflecting on music and through music, and I love communicating with people about music. With my students, with my former students, with currently very important musicians in Romania - performers, conductors, and of course, composers - we always talk about our teachers, our mentors, because, in the end, we're talking about Romanian musical culture, and we are products of that culture. We pass on what we know and try to keep it at the highest level.

I mentioned earlier that you're the artistic director of a festival. An important event dedicated to contemporary music is coming up. And to paraphrase a character from your opera A Lost Letter, after millennial struggles, which lasted 33 years, this Sunday marks the 34th edition of the festival…

The International Week of New Music. Exactly.

It's a festival founded in 1991, right after the Revolution, by academician Ștefan Niculescu, my former composition professor at the Bucharest Conservatory. And look, we've clung to this festival, and we've managed to bring it to its 34th edition. Of course, times have changed, music has changed, composers have changed, new generations have appeared, but this festival is very important because it's essentially an engine that keeps Romanian musical creation going. At the same time, it's a platform that allows us to present everything we compose to the public. Naturally, based on a selection. And at the same time, it allows us to showcase music by our colleagues from abroad. This interaction is very important, because things change there too-generations change, people in decision-making roles change. And so, this platform manages, in a way, to bring our relationships with those abroad up to date.

In recent years, the festival has had, at the very least, a conceptual ambition. This year, it even has an intriguing title: The Carnival Constellation. How did you think of this title? How was this edition conceived?

Yes, for several editions, we designed it around a certain concept-the concept of four utopias, named after characters from literary or cinematic history or, who knows… Ulysses, Gulliver, Nirvana, and The Matrix. Now we've turned the page and changed the concept, which I hope will remain for several more editions. The idea of constellations, first of all, is a generous one because contemporary music today is extremely diverse. There's no longer a single trend where everyone writes like a carbon copy. Not at all! Each of us has different aesthetic preferences and writes different music, so we're like separate solar systems.

But what does a constellation do, really? What is a constellation? It's a vision of form, because the stars in it are independent of each other. They don't know… the solar systems are thousands, even millions of years apart. But we, from our point of view, group them together. We say, "This is the constellation Lyra," or "the constellation Vega." We group them because, from our perspective, they seem to form a meaningful shape, something that says something to us. So we said that contemporary music is the same. You have pieces within a single concert that are very different, but at some point, they start to tell you something about today, about our era. And so we decided to go with this idea of constellations.

Why carnival - why The Carnival Constellation? Because, as it happened, we're opening with an opera of mine - but again, it just happened that way because the Bucharest National Opera had been planning this for some time, it was already in their sights, and now we've finally managed to stage it. And, in the finale, there's also a piece by Aurel Stroe, taken from the soundtrack of the film The Misfortune. So, Carnival Stories and The Misfortune - two works, let's say, by Caragiale. A comedy and a tragedy.

Then we have a variety of performances. A lot of electronic music, again, from all over the world. Electronic music with live instruments. We're also hosting a musicology symposium on electronic music today, with guests from abroad and from Romania - from Bucharest and Cluj alike.

And, not least, we have three orchestras: the two Radio orchestras - the Radio Chamber Orchestra and the National Radio Orchestra - plus the orchestra of the National University of Music Bucharest, performing in the festival's closing concert, on the 25th. They form the backbone of the festival. The 18 concerts include chamber concerts, choral concerts, lieder recitals, and solo instrumental performances… So, there's a wide variety of options, and I invite anyone interested to take part in the festival.

Let's talk about the opening specifically, the world premiere of your opera Carnival Stories. First of all, what made you return to Caragiale?

Ștefan Neagrău did. He wrote A Lost Letter first. I took a long time to start working on it - I couldn't quite find my way, I've told that story before… but in the end, it came together. It premiered in 2012. It turned out to be a success. It's been performed a few more times. There's even an HD recording online.

And Ștefan followed up. He said, "I feel like doing Carnival Stories too." In 2017, he sent me the finished libretto. I took until 2021 to gather ideas, to see how things stood, and there was also something else…

In Ștefan Neagrău's libretto, which is based on Caragiale but ties together Caragiale's scenes in a truly sensational way, it gave me the impression of being a cross between Così fan tutte and Don Giovanni by Mozart. It has rhythm, rhyme… an absolutely brilliant libretto written by an opera director and a great admirer of Caragiale, a master of verse.

I liked it so much that I said to myself I couldn't touch this libretto lightly. I needed time, I needed to gather many themes, because I had already started to envision Caragiale's world in music, but I needed specific musical themes. Over 30-40 well-crafted themes for each character, for the chorus, for the male chorus, for the children's chorus. So this opera, which Neagrău conceived in two acts and three tableaux, has a very high level of complexity.

But let me return to what I wanted to say. There's a line in Neagrău's libretto that says, "Today, everyone wears a mask." The chorus says it. And this was during the pandemic, in 2020. And I said: "It fits." Indeed, we were all wearing a mask. A different one. So I started writing in 2021 and finished in 2023, as the world was starting to take its masks off.

But it couldn't be staged right away. Sure, there were various reasons. I revised it, I reorchestrated it, I prepared a voice-piano score. Unfortunately, at the end of 2024, I, along with Tiberiu Soare and Viorica Petrovici, who was the set designer for A Lost Letter and is also for Carnival Stories, and Ștefan Ignat, the artistic director of the Opera, received a text message from Ștefan Neagrău. It included his director's notes, and he told us that he was suffering from a terminal illness and was sending us his production book. And on January 4th, he passed away.

So, how can I put it... this motivated us even more. Both the Opera's leadership, Daniel Jinga and Tiberiu Soare, and Viorica Petrovici, as well as the entire team, all consider this premiere to be a tribute to Ștefan Neagrău. And I see it the same way. The libretto is brilliant, and the show promises to be something truly, truly beautiful.

So, on the 17th and 18th of May at the Bucharest National Opera, the opera Carnival Storiesby Dan Dediu will be staged for the first time. Any similarities to A Lost Letter?

The musical world is the same. It's 19th-century Romania, with its specific social dynamics. Of course, here it's more about love and a comedy of errors, but the character types are delightful. Plus, the language, with its slang, with the "mangafaua," the "epitrop," and the famous "ți-am fost fidea," delights everyone.

So we have the opening of the festival, the musicology symposium you mentioned… and I'm curious whether that will touch on what concerns us today - the sudden entry of artificial intelligence into our lives. Some see it as a positive tool, others less so. What do you think? Will this symposium also address the creative process involving AI? What's your take?

I believe artificial intelligence can help us extend our creativity. It can assist us in many tasks: writing faster, extracting scores more quickly, doing certain things more efficiently. But in terms of depth, it can't really help us.

Of course, the more extensive the database it assimilates, the more it will be capable - and is already capable - of doing many things algorithmically. But I want to believe that it won't reach a certain level of creativity. I mean, it simply can't reach human creativity, because AI fundamentally rests on human creativity, on what humans have produced over the centuries in the field of music.s, nowadays there are programs where you give a description, and they generate music. But that music, in the end, is still based on existing music. It's like what Aurel Stroe used to say, it becomes a composition class. It can compose in the style of. You want reggae, it gives you reggae. You want rock, it gives you rock. You want latino, it gives you latino. It can even write you a little poem, if you ask for one, about a student and a girl in Cișmigiu. And that's it. It draws from the arsenal of tools it has assimilated. But it's not going to come up with something revolutionaryk. It simply can't, in that regard. Just by combining elements, you don't get the astral idea. But yes, it can do a lot. And here, I would be very cautious, because this is also an area where Deception can thrive.

Exactly! So you believe the humans cannot be replaced by AI?

Absolutely not! It will become something else. Definitely not a composer! It will become a compiler, because it will choose from various models, different things, and combine them. But a composer composes - that's where the word comes from. They take elements and combine them to produce new meaning. If you don't have that horizon of meaning, then you're just compiling things through a technical maneuver.

Yes, exactly. We talked about the symposium. I noticed in the festival's presentation that it is structured around three main directions, and one of them focuses on female composers from Romania.

Absolutely. That needs to be mentioned, because I've noticed for a long time now: Romania currently has a great many women composers, something you don't find in other countries. So many, and good ones at that. There's a whole cohort of women and some, of course, venerable, like Doina Rotaru or Violeta Dinescu, but also very young, who persist, who persevere, who are composing, whose works are being performed, who are being commissioned for new ones.

I wanted to bring this thread of Romanian composition into the spotlight, it's a defining characteristic of the present, whether we like it or not. I think in my generation there are more women composers than men. Of course, there were some, a few colleagues of mine who sadly passed away, like George Balint or Nucu Teodoreanu. But the women composers, as I said, are very diverse, well-trained, and produce very original music.

Since 2022, you've been the president of the Union of Composers and Musicologists, and you know the reality of the Romanian musical world. How is the music profession adapting to the times we live in? Since 2020, with the pandemic, the world has faced new challenges that seem never-ending.

Yes. That's right. And I don't think they'll end anytime soon. We'll continue to face multiple challenges, whatever form they take. Climate, for example… The pandemic was a turning point, I would say. Everyone pulled back, and some people worked quietly - for some, it was actually very beneficial once they got past the initial shock. Nothing was being performed, really. As you know, it was forbidden. In 2020, I had a triple concerto at the opening of the Enescu Contest at the Athenaeum - performed by former laureates, under the baton of a Catalan conductor, with the orchestra wearing masks, one person per music stand, and the hall completely empty. I wasn't even allowed to attend. I watched it on TVR1, since it was broadcast. And at the end - when the music reached a paroxysmal, emotionally powerful conclusion designed to captivate a live audience - they all stood up and bowed… to an entirely empty hall. It was an absolutely sinister situation. But afterward, it was like a floodgate opened - everything exploded. And now, if we take a look and count how many concerts and cultural events are happening simultaneously in Bucharest, it's hard to believe. Clearly, people needed culture, socialization, to see one another, to share what they had been working on. I think the same thing happened with composers and musicologists. It's the same phenomenon.

Maybe not in all genres equally - especially in monumental genres, where less has happened. We have some major works that were written but never performed, still sitting in manuscript. And that's what we're trying to do with the Union of Composers and Musicologists: to take care of all of Romanian musical culture, make it public, so that anyone who wants to access it - to listen to it or comment on it - can do so. But it's important that it exists. For example, I can tell you right now: there's an incredible 50-minute symphony with choir and orchestra by Octavian Nemescu that has never been performed. It's just lying there in manuscript, and Nemescu passed away in 2020. That's five years ago now?

We'll see how we can, together with Radio România, at least get it recorded - maybe in stages: one part one year, another part the next. Because of course, it's a mammoth symphony and hard to program in a regular concert.

Or Luceafărul, the oratorio based on Eminescu's poem, by Andrei Tănăsescu - it's been performed, we programmed it in this festival a few years ago (only the first part, which is already about 40 minutes long), but the second part hasn't been performed yet.

There are two or three other works like that, waiting their turn. It's very important to have an association like ours, promoting the abundance, or even the scarcity, of what we do have. When it comes to chamber music, we actually have a lot. New works are written and acquired by the Union of Composers in every session, we have two sessions a year, and in each one, 50 to 60 works are submitted.

And Radio România and Radio România Muzical actively support the work of the Union of Composers and Musicologists. In fact, the events you mentioned within the International Week of New Music, held here at the Radio Hall, will be broadcast live on our station.

In an interview, you once said, Dan Dediu: "I have a quirk. If I'm not composing, I do nothing. I'm as addicted to composition as others are to the gym."What's currently on your worktable? I know that in the fall, at the Enescu Festival's opening concert, one of your works will be performed.

Yes. Conductor Cristian Măcelaru asked me to write a piece for the opening concert, with the "George Enescu" Philharmonic in Bucharest. So I wrote a concerto for orchestra. It will be performed at the opening of the Enescu Festival. It took me quite a while, about eight months, to write it, in three movements that are played without interruption. But I hope it's a piece that will represent me well going forward. Right now, I'm also working on orchestrating some beautiful pieces for violin and piano four hands by Enescu, which he wrote when he was 19, and which will also be performed at the Enescu Festival.

These days in Ljubljana, there's an event dedicated to contemporary music - the International Rostrum of Composers, a sort of Eurovision for contemporary music. Twenty-three countries are represented. From Romania, our colleague Laura Ana Mânzat is the delegate, she's also a composer, with the support of the Union of Composers and Musicologists. She'll present three works: one by you, Magnum Misterium, recorded by the Radio Academic Choir; Solomonarum by Diana Rotaru with flutist Ion Bogdan Ștefănescu; and Through the Sounds of White Flowersby Ulpiu Vlad with the Arcadia Quartet. We'll soon find out who the winner is.

Yes, the winner isn't really what matters most. What's important is that we're part of this European forum and that our music is being heard and will continue to be heard in other European countries - just as the other pieces will be broadcast by Radio România. It's extremely important that the radio takes part with contemporary Romanian music in this Rostrum of Composers Forum.

How is contemporary Romanian composition seen abroad? I know you've had several works commissioned internationally. How are Romanian composers perceived? I know performers have a good reputation - at least that's my understanding - but what about Romanian contemporary composition?

Well, abroad I think we're more present as individuals rather than as a cohesive scene. And, for example, each of us has had success in different places. My music was performed a lot in Germany and Austria in the 1990s. Now it's performed more in the United States and the United Kingdom. For Doina Rotaru, it's a different story: she's very well known in France, but also in Japan. In fact, flutists around the world perform Doina Rotaru's music. There are also other composers - like Aurel Stroe. He's actually having a bit of a renaissance in France right now; they've released a CD of his works, and he even has a fan club led by Bernard Cavana, who was, in a way, a student of Stroe's. And then there's Paul Constantinescu. A German pianist, Oliver Triendl, just recorded Wedding in the Carpathians and his Piano Concerto with the Rostock Orchestra.

So, slowly but surely, we are becoming better known. Not as much as we should be, in my opinion. We need to do more - both as a country and as individuals.

Let's come back to the International Week of New Music. Dan, please extend an invitation to the listeners of Radio România Muzical to attend the events of this festival, which begins this Sunday.

Yes, I invite you all, between the 18th and 25th of May, to attend as many of the events as you can. There are 18 concerts, and each one has a title. These titles are inspired by Schumann's Carnaval piano suite. I've tried to match the concerts with those ideas… of course, I invented some of the titles - not all of them are taken directly from Schumann. But as you can see, we have a tradition of the carnivalesque in music, which doesn't just mean celebration. It also means humor, chaos, disguise - a multitude of emotional states that can be discovered and will come together throughout the festival.

The main venues are the concert halls of the National University of Music in Bucharest - to whom we're very grateful for all the logistical support. The main organizer is the Union of Composers and Musicologists, with substantial support from the Ministry of Culture, and of course from Radio România - including the orchestras and choirs, Radio România Muzical, and Radio România Cultural - our media partners.

There's also the Apollo 111 Theater.

Exactly. On Thursday, we have a performance there by Irinel Anghel called About a Black Swan. I'll keep the mystery for now. But the doors are open.

Thank you for joining us!

Thank you for having me!