The Radio Chamber Orchestra

“In the third decade of the history of the first Romanian Radio concert orchestra, the need arose to found an additional ensemble, whose purpose would be to contribute background music for studio recordings. It was thus that the Romanian Broadcasting Company’s Studio Orchestra came into being in the year 1947. Over the course of more than thirty seasons, the ensemble has combined special studio recordings with a presence on the concert stage. Thanks to its stylistic flexibility and the breadth of its repertoire (from the baroque and classical to twentieth-century music and new works) and its work with instrumental and vocal soloists, the Radio Studio Orchestra has made great qualitative leaps, and performs a wide variety of concert, vocal-symphonic and lyric music for live and recorded broadcasts. This merit of course belongs in equal measure to the maestros that have conducted the ensemble over the years: Constantin Silvestri, Mendi Rodan, Constantin Bobescu Carol Litvin Ludovic Bács, and Cristian Brâncusi.

A fresh stage in the ensemble’s evolution has unfolded over the two decades since 1990, when its classic structure (approximately thirty-seven members) was defined under the title Radio Chamber Orchestra. In this form, the ensemble has accompanied the National Radio Orchestra as a partner in the projects of the last twenty seasons, inviting numerous conductors and soloists up on to the podium and thereby contributing to its current prestige. These conductors have included Horia Andreescu, Enrique Garcia Asensio, Ovidiu Balan, Amaury du Closel, Pierre Colombo, Lawrence Foster, I.Ionescu-Galati, Camil Marinescu, Cristian Mandeal, Milen Nachev, Emil Simon, and Jin Wang; the vocal soloists Elena Cernei, Viorica Cortez, Ileana Cotrubas, Ruxandra Donose, Barbara Hendricks, Eugenia Moldoveanu, Katia Riciarelli, Francesco Araiza, Nicolae Herlea, Dan Iordachescu, David Ohanesian, Ludovic Spiess, and Eduard Tumagian; and the instrumental soloistsDmitri Alexeev, Pierre-Yves Artaud, Daniel Blumenthal, Lola Bobescu, Dana Borsan, Vladimir Bunin, Valentin Gheorghiu, Natalia Gutman Elisabeth Leonskaja, Silvia Marcovici, Mihaela Martin, Aurelian Octav Popa, Ion Ivan Roncea, Eugen Sârbu, and Mihaela Ursuleasa. The Radio Chamber Orchestra has recorded an impressive number of LPs and CDs for labels in France, Italy, Germany and Romania, and has a rich archive of television soundtrack recordings. The ensemble has been a guest on the international tours organised by the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company (Germany, Austria, the Baltic states, Spain, Russia, France, Italy, Japan, Ukraine, Greece, South Korea, Turkey and Cyprus), and performs in concert at every Georges Enesco International Festival.” (Grigore Constantinescu)

Official website here.