SoNoRo Conac: Chamber music event to hold concert at King Charles’s house in Viscri

The chamber music event SoNoRo Conac has announced a new segment of its tour, which will see two concerts this month, one hosted by the Viscri house of King Charles III and the other by the Balș House in Iași.

The concerts, delivered by musicians Răzvan Popovici (viola), Alexandru Spînu (viola), and Cristiana Mihart (piano), are scheduled for May 15 in Viscri and May 20 in Iași.

At its 12th edition in 2024, the event takes place this year under the name L’Heure Bleue, referencing “the dreamy space created during a classical music concert.” It emerged from a desire to draw attention to heritage architecture and exceptional buildings in Romania and has hosted concerts in more than 120 historic buildings. Many of the venues were consolidated following the concerts and were later turned into spaces for cultural events.

“I am delighted to have the opportunity to deliver the first classical music concert at the King’s House in Viscri since it opened to the public. The concert fulfills an aim that SoNoRo Conac had from the very beginning – to deliver concerts in venues in need of refurbishing and in places worth being given back to the community. Very generously, King Charles III included the house in the Transylvanian tourist circuit and this can only overjoy us," Răzvan Popovici, the director of SoNoRo Conac, commented, quotedby Radio Romania Cultural.

"At the same time, the concert at the Balș House in Iași honors an old, Neoclassical–style building where the first theater performance in Romanian was held. Also here, pianist and composer Franz Liszt delivered a concert in 1847. I am glad the Moldova Philharmonic and the George Enescu Arts University are hosted here since I’ve always wanted, in all the SoNoRo projects, to favor the meeting between the arts, so we will have a place where music and the visual arts coexist,” he added.

More on this year’s SoNoRo Conac here.

The King’s House in Viscri is open to the public from April to October. The traditional Saxon property hosts in its reconverted barn the permanent art and botanical book exhibition Transylvania Florilegium as well as a series of temporary exhibitions.

The Balș House in Iași, which belonged to treasurer Alecu Balş, was erected around 1815 in a Neoclassical style. The edifice hosted in time the Sacré Coeur Institute of the nuns of the Notre Dame de Sion Order, already existing in Iaşi in the 19th century. The building was extended between 1900 and 1910.