Pianist Daniel Ciobanu is a born storyteller
BY WENNEKE SAVENIJE 27 NOVEMBER 2021
Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
Its important as artists in today's manipulative and compulsive world to defeat any external attempt to isolate ourselves in ivory towers' - Daniel Ciobanu
Last night, seamlessly following the umpteenth depressing press conference by Rutte and De Jonge, the Romanian Daniel Ciobanu (1991) made his uplifting appearance in the Concertgebouw's remarkably well-filled Recital Hall. No mere grey heads, but young and hip audiences, who were addressed informally by the pianist, who was immediately in the audience's good graces just because of his haircut - the sides of his head shaved, a samurai-style bun on top of his head. With humour and a fluent tongue he introduced his special recital, in which Silvestri's Baccanale (1933) and an own piano arrangement of Gesulado's five-part 'Moro, lasso, al mio duolo' (1611) formed the prelude to the Pièce de Résistance, the Kreisleriana by Schumann, followed by the Carillon Nocturne by Enescu (1913-1916), Le vent du Transylvanie from 'Levantiques', op. 64 by Dan Dieu and the Hungarian rhapsody no. 12 (1847) by Liszt. All this by covid without intermission.
I had not heard of Ciobanu before, but he seems to have attracted international attention for the first time at the 2017 Arthur Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, where he won the Silver Medal. He then continued to study in Scotland and Paris, while increasingly giving solo recitals around the world. Definitive recognition of his unique talents followed when he successfully replaced his fellow countryman Radu Lupu at the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen and after his equally successful debut at the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig in the early 2020s. Since then, Ciobanu has passed for a Rising Star in the piano firmament. But the young Romanian is much more: he started the original music magazine #SHARP, created works of art and founded his own music festival: the Neamt Music Festival in his hometown Piatra Neamt.
Silvestri's Baccanale degenerated in the spectacular reading by the energetic Romanian into an intoxicating acoustic bacchanal, of which all brain cells were intoxicated by a magnificent alternation of gracefully undulating arpeggios, thundering basses and Eastern-looking chord sequences. Immediately it became clear that the musician Ciobanu not only plays the piano very expressively and colourfully, but above all wants to tell a story with the notes that he conjures up from the grand piano with intense concentration and an enviable instrumental ease. No better introduction than a wild bacchanal for the mysterious Gesualdo, who killed his wife out of jealousy (or had her killed) and was known for the orgies he organised in Naples. Silvestri flowed seamlessly into the serene stillness of Gesualdo's fascinating five-part a capella music that Ciobanu translated with refined taste, integrity and empathy into lilting melody lines and subtly dosed harmonies.
Music clearly comes from within Ciobanu, in his own words: 'It all started with my grandfather's intimidating passion for music, church organ music to be precise, which surrounded me for most of my childhood. He was truly an exotic bird in our village, who insisted on building a family 'band' in the days of heavy farming under the communist regime in Romania in a quintet version (unfortunately there were only five applicants in the family, otherwise they could have played full orchestral arrangements) of two violins, two accordions and a kind of upright organ, which he built himself by modifying an old Bösendorfer Baby Grand, which was stubborn enough not to fit anywhere in the house. So they played arrangements of chorales written for organ with this improvised quintet, which spiced up my father's childhood in a very cheerful way. Whenever I visited my grandfather in the countryside, I never escaped a Bach prelude without a fugue on his personalised piano. My acquaintance with this inspiring person who happened to be my grandfather, and my father's inability at the time to pursue a career in such a bourgeois field as classical music, led to the conclusion that I should carry on the legacy, and that's how I ended up in front of this black and white beast.' After his first piano teacher, Cosma Magdolna, taught him the beauty and joy of making music as a boy of six, the lifelong labour of demanding piano technique began, with the ultimate aim of being able to 'speak to the heart and mind as freely and sincerely as possible.'
Ciobanu: 'Once my fingers could make some sense of that eccentric chessboard, I really began to listen and dig into the aural world of the great pianists, like Horowitz, who could keep me genuinely interested in the music for more than eight seconds. With such a vivid sound canvas as Horowitz could extract from any piece of music, he evoked a sincerity of sound and emotion to which I really could not remain indifferent; it was almost religious, until later I also discovered the 'boozy' side of his interpretations, which made me fall in love even deeper and more desperately. Rubinstein who sings so organically with the piano, Volodos with his incredible imagination of the sound world and his brain-crunching technique, and the composers with whom one can feel that their existence was somehow an extension of their innate passion for music, such as Prokofiev, who can truly achieve the best of both worlds (enchantingly simple melodies and the most spirited sarcastic political satires, making him my favourite composer), Chopin with such penetrating inner monologues that they always seemed to me to be the piano version of my early cries of anguish after breaking up with my girlfriends in adolescence, and Beethoven with his enfant terrible attitude and revolutionary jitters. Recently, Keith Jarrett has also ignited his own temple in my heart with lots of candles and strange sounds.
It may be clear: Ciobanu was born for music, but he is not a Romanian for nothing. Music is in his genes, and apart from technique, style and interpretation, it is about more substantial things, reflecting everything that can happen in the human mind. The emotional dualism of Schumann's alter egos Eusebius (romantic, thoughtful, dreamy) and Florestan (passionate, impetuous, extrovert, impulsive) in Kreisleriana, with alternately stormy and then extremely tender or melancholic passages, appeared to be tailor-made for this passionate storyteller. Bravura, ecstasy, anger, despair, playfulness, tenderness and orphaned abandonment were all to be heard in a breathtaking succession of immediately appealing piano sounds.
For those, like me, who cannot stand 'false' harmonies, Enescu's Carillon nocturne is a true ordeal, if not a tantalising torment, but the spiritual surrender with which Ciobanu strung together the writhing harmonies made up for much. Fortunately, ferocious gusts of wind from Transylvania drove the false bells away again, after which Ciobanu ended his spectacular recital with a brilliant, gipsy-like reading of Liszt's Hungarian rhapsody No. 12, which not only demands extreme virtuosity, but preferably also a demonic imagination on the part of the pianist. And the talented Ciobanu - whose ideal of happiness is 'Being surrounded by people who cherish your inner child and also appreciate a divinely made gin and tonic' - has no shortage of all that. Original musicians like him can also persuade younger generations to love classical music. As an encore Ciobanu played a joyful Cuban Mazurka by Ernesto Lecuona.