Bucharest mayor wants 4,500 seat 'proper' concert hall for George Enescu festival

Bucharest mayor Sorin Oprescu would like to start work on a new, modern concert hall on the esplanade of the current Romanian National Library, which could be ready by the next edition of the George Enescu festival. The new concert hall would host around 4,000 – 4,500 people, and replace the Romanian Athenaeum, which is too small for the ever higher number of participants in the festival. The project will be built under a public – private partnership, and it could be ready in one or two years. The idea of a new concert venue in Bucharest has been raised before, as Ioan Holender, the president of the Enescu festival, has been complaining about the acoustics of Sala Palatului, where some of the concerts in the festival are usually scheduled. Some foreign orchestras declined invitations at the festival because of the lack of a proper concert hall. Famous conductors Zubin Mehta and Antonio Pappano complained about the acoustics of Sala Palatului and asked the Romanian authorities to find solutions for the festival in the future. In 2011, the George Enescu festival gathered 16,000 people who attended the around 100 concerts. The festival in Bucharest, which is held every two years,was included among the most important classical music festivals around Europe this summer by the British newspaper “The Independent”. The George Enescu Festival, which takes place every two years, was established in 1958 in recognition of Enescu’s genius and as an homage to the great Romanian composer’s life and creation. editor@romania-insider.com