Hoinar.Odyssey: Bucharest classical music festival explores theme of travel for 2025 edition

Hoinar.Odyssey, the eighth edition of the classical music festival, explores in 2025 the theme of travel. It proposes a concept that brings together classical music, jazz, electronic sounds, contemporary theater, a musical, and new literature.

The event, scheduled to take place between May 15 and May 20 at the ACT Theatre and the Romanian Athenaeum, will include performances, debates, artistic installations, and workshops.

The festival will open with the piano concert The Wanderer, meant to "bring the classical piano recital into the third millennium" by combining a light show and the soundscape of electronic music. The concept belongs to pianist David Gray.

Along with David Gray and Florian Mitrea, the artists who will take the stage to perform the music of Liszt and Brahms, are Daria Tudor and Luca Rusu. Daria Tudor is a winner of the Best Young Artist of the Year award at the Art of the Piano – Cincinnati 2019 international festival and is currently a lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Barenboim Said Academy. Luca Rusu, a young pianist who studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland with pianist Graeme McNaught, has performed with the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra.

"Journey appears in our lives in many forms and often speaks of initiation and character formation, of the chance of great encounters that define us as adults, of the mystical journey of the soul between life and death and, ultimately, of the crossroads where we find the great questions that we must answer, ultimately discovering ourselves. This year, we have prepared a tumultuous journey, an Odyssey of self-discovery in which we will cry, laugh, believe, and feel together," Florian Mitrea, the founder and artistic director of the festival, said.

(Photo: the organizers)