The Travelling Piano – Special “Best Of” Tour
Pianist Horia Mihail is once again on the road as part of a special national tour. From 9 April to 7 May he will give eighteen recitals in seventeen cities around the country. The eighth Travelling Piano tour marks the centenary of the Great Union of Alba Iulia, to celebrate which Horia Mihail will be playing a series of famous pieces by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Georges Enesco.
It all began in 2011, inspired by a story found in the musical history books.
And if it was possible in 1846, when prolific composer and pianist Franz Liszt took his piano and travelled around Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania, the provinces that make up today’s Romania, then why not today? Merely for the sake of our false notion that it can no longer be done? The concerts Liszt gave for communities where such events were very rare at the time were received with great public enthusiasm. The very arrival of Liszt in cities such as Timișoara, Arad, Cluj, Jassy and Bucharest was an important event. Many of the concerts were charitable, with the pianist donating his fee to the poor or for the establishment of schools.
Since 2011, Horia Mihail has visited dozens of towns around the country, accompanied by the travelling piano or playing the pianos placed at his disposal locally. Travelling pianos have now been entrusted to communities in Tulcea, Caracal, Deva, Alba Iulia and Roman, but their journey has been long and has they have passed through many other towns that do not yet have a concert piano of their own. Sometimes, the pianos have spent no more than one evening in the towns they have passed through.
And now the story of the travelling piano has reached the year 2018, Romania’s Centenary, and the time has come for a well-deserved “Best Of” tour, in which Horia Mihail and his friend the Travelling Piano invite us to listen or re-listen to Mozart’s famous Alla Turca Sonata, included in the 100% Mozart Tour of 2014, and Beethoven’s equally famous Moonlight Sonata, featured in the 2013 tour, as well as a work never before played in a Travelling Piano tour: Schumann’s Kinderszenen. There will also be a surprise, in the form of Georges Enesco’s Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in the transcription for piano made by the composer himself.
For more details, go to www.pianulcalator.ro
The Travelling Piano
On the footsteps of Franz Liszt, who gave concerts in Romania between 1846 and 1847, playing an Erard piano which accompanied him in every city where he performed, in 2011 pianist Horia Mihail started an original journey in today’s Romania: in the project The Travelling Piano, organized and supported by Radio Romania and the Accendo Cultural Association. A story with thousands of kilometers, with dozens of viewers and listeners in concert halls and millions of listeners through radio broadcasting, TV or Internet, who attended the first four editions of the national tour The Travelling Piano. The first tour performed by Horia Mihail, a soloist of the Romanian Radio Orchestras and Choirs, organized in 2011, featured concerts given in 12 Romanian cities and celebrated the anniversary of 200 years since the birth of Franz Liszt. The project continued, at every edition, with tours carried out in Romania and abroad, and at the end of every tour the travelling piano was offered to one of the hosting cities who didn’t have until then a concert piano.
