Organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Romanian Embassy in Austria, the Târgu Mureș Philharmonic Orchestra will give a concert on the 8th of November 2024 in the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, conducted by Pablo Boggiano. In this context, a press conference was held on Friday, 22nd of March 2024, before the event.

Ovidiu Maior, President of the Association for Community Development "Iunona":

"We have been working on this project since December 2022. We had a very good and really welcoming reaction from the Musikverein, who accepted our project. There were some discussions about the programme, the orchestra, the artists, we studied, we were finally accepted with a programme including works by George Enescu, Béla Bartók and Astor Piazzolla. Enescu and Bartók are two composers who are very well known both in Romania and Austria, but they also have a very strong connection with Târgu Mureș; besides the fact that both of them had concerts in the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mureș - even today there are two streets named after them in the immediate vicinity of the Palace of Culture.

On th 4th of April we have a press conference at the Romanian Embassy in Austria courtesy of the Ambassador, His Excellency Mr. Emil Hurezeanu; and on the same day, in the evening, we will have a concert at the ICR Vienna. Four members of the philharmonic will perform, in the form of a quartet, works by Enescu, Piazzolla and Bartók. It will be a concert for the general public, but the idea is to promote the November concert. We make no secret of the fact that we have two countries on our radar in the next two years, France and Germany in 2025 and 2026. The idea is for the Vienna event to be a kick-off for a tour, at least a European one, in the coming period."

Liviu Jicman, President of the Romanian Cultural Institute:

"I would like to say that we are, on the one hand honoured and on the other hand that it is a signal of the natural. It is a joy for the ICR to be a partner in such an event which has several advantages - it is taking place on one of the most important musical stages in the world, on the one hand, the capital of music, Vienna, and on the other hand, we are talking about the Musikverein Hall, one of the best known, if not the best known in the world. At the same time, I think a very important element is that this concert has been included in the Musikverein programme, so it is not just a hosted concert, but this important musical institution in Vienna has decided to include the concert in its programme. I would also like to congratulate you from a professional perspective. In addition to the musical content, I would like to congratulate you from a cultural management point of view because I admire very much how you have organised this project - that you have planned in advance, that you ensure an early promotion of the event, that you have opened and had this dialogue with the partners of the Musikverein, who have made it possible to include the event in their cultural agenda."

Conductor Pablo Boggiano:

"It is a great honour for me to be part of this project. I have been working with the Târgu Mureș Philharmonic for almost 20 years and to be a representative of Romanian culture abroad is very important for me, because I admire the tradition and importance of culture in Romania. In all the great orchestras in the world we find Romanian musicians, and the respect for Romanian art is always at the highest level.

My goal was to represent the city of Târgu Mureș with a concentrated programme in one of the most prestigious halls in the world, the Musikverein. So far, more than half of the seats in the hall are already filled, so I am very confident to say that the event will be a great success."

Mihail Poruțiu, vice-president of the Association for Community Development "Iunona":

"What I would like to emphasize is that, together with the ICR, much of the success in Vienna was due to the involvement, from the very beginning, of the Romanian Embassy in Vienna. So, these were the pillars on which we managed to build a relationship in Vienna and which gave us an image of seriousness in the Austrian capital.

When we presented the project to the Musikverein, they told us that there are many requests from the world to rent the hall and that there are people with a lot of money who can rent the hall, but the it is not rented on money, it is rented on projects and ideas, and they liked our project very much, the way it was built from a cultural point of view and the way it was thought and this gave us the certainty that we thought this project as it should be."

Gyorgy Levente, manager of the Târgu Mureș Philharmonic:

"In total there are 144 of us at the philharmonic. They are very happy about this possibility and I hope that for our musicians this will be a motivation to study even more, because I have to tell you that last year we organised 116 concerts, of which the orchestra was involved in 77 projects. So, we are working on it."