Bucharest Romania

Rebecca Franks visits a city that, belying its tough economic past, welcomes classical music’s finest to its festival and competition

- Rebecca Franks

Bucharest wears its history on the face of its buildings. As I walk around the streets, I feel as if the architecture exposes layers of time. There are grand French-style Belle Epoque apartments and leafy parks, the vestiges of a flourishing era that saw the city dubbed ‘Little Paris’. Alongside are Brutalist concrete blocks constructed under communism, a system in place here for 42 years. Both visibly bear the brunt of the economic corruption under the dictatorial president Nicolae Ceausescu, and many of the walls are all peeling plaster and crumbling stone, a reminder of the country’s recent tough times.

A tour of this ‘complete chaos’ of styles is not to be missed, says Cristian Măcelaru, artistic director of the George Enescu International Festival, for which I’m here. ‘Bucharest is a perfect living example of what happens when a charismatic person with nutty ideas gets hold of a country and suffocates it for 35 years,’ he says, referring of course to Ceausescu. ‘You see the destruction and monstrosity of what happened prior to the revolution of 1989 and the beauty of what existed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To be able to live and experience all of it at the same time, while also being able to see some of the greatest music ever made, is truly a unique experience.’