Iancu Dumitrescu / Ana-Maria AVRAM's Pressbook

* "Personnalité indépendante dans une Roumanie où l'immobilisme a longtemps été imposé comme une vertu, Iancu Dumitrescu n'a pas été prophète dans son pays et ne le deviendra vraisemblablement jamais. Qu'importe! Le compositeur, dont Harry Halbreich relevait "la personnalité radicale, audacieusement novatrice ", poursuit un travail visant à transgresser les frontières entre l'électronique et l'instrumental, entre la notation et l'improvisation. L'analyse et la synthèse disparaissent au profit d'un chant multi-directionnel, l'harmonie se renouvelle sans s'apitoyer sur son propre passé. Cette "pan-consonance" (toujours selon Halbreich) passe par la transgression des limites des instruments traditionnels ("Movemur et Sumus") ou de l'invention d'instruments nouveaux ("Galaxy"). La quête du son primordial semble le but principal de Dumitrescu, non pas dans le sens d'un accord mystique (comme dans les laps hindous) mais plutôt comme invocation d'une source de permanence et de diversité."
 Costin CAZABAN - Le MONDE DE LA MUSIQUE - Paris

* "I was fascinated. I feel that this is the most beautiful music I have heard in years... Brilliant. I am wondering... "
 David PRESCOTT - Generations Unlimited - New-York

* "The music of Iancu Dumitrescu explores the ultimate sense of sound guiding the listener through new spheres of sonic adventure, a kind of cryptical music..."          Robert ZANK - Edition RZ  -  Berlin

* "Iancu DUMITRESCU is Romanian, an extraordinary composer by anyone's standards, he's indeed out on a limb in his homeland. "Ursa Mare" is exceptionally stunning and to say the least extraordinary... "

* "Nous sommes fiers d'annoncer la venue à Paris de l'Ensemble Hyperion, dirigé par Iancu Dumitrescu et Ana-Maria Avram, considérés parmi les plus grands compositeurs contemporains d'aujourd'hui..."
Gérard PAPE  (Directeur CCM Iannis Xenakis) - 2oo4, Paris
* "It's hard to imagine a more imaginative, creative, colorful, and for that matter, better composition for solo bass than Dumitrescu's...." Dean SUZUKI, Option Magazine -  Los  Angeles

* "Iancu Dumitrescu lui-même, le plus hardi des novateurs roumains resté au pays présentait deux oeuvres: "Movemur et sumus",(...) aux harmonies spectrales d'une absolue beauté, et "Grande Ourse" (...) avec les sonorités microtoniques incroyables..." Harry HALBREICH  -  Le MONDE de la Musique -  Paris

* "London. Royal Festival Hall, New Aura Series. The UK début of Iancu Dumitrescu, Romania's leading contemporary composer, and his virtuoso ensemble Hyperion. Dumitrescu's acousmatic compositions are restless, detailed forays into the aesthetic of noise, dramatically penetrating the very fabric of instruments and articulating entirely new sounds - by turns violent, reflective, impassioned and eerily disarming."  BOX OFFICE & INFORMATION, LMC-BBC 3 - London

* "This composer appeals to the intellectual avant-garde, as well as noise mongers. Dumitrescu writes a lot of excellent music..."  Dean  SUZUKI - OPTION MAGAZINE - Los Angeles

 * "The young generation of Romanian composers headed by Iancu Dumitrescu has a unique position through its development of the "spectral sound" music, using almost only acousmatical instruments..."

 * "Mnémosyne est une pièce écrite pour piano préparé, saxophone basse, flûte octobasse, deux percussions, tam-tam de résonance et bande magnétique. (Commande Radio France) Elève de Sergiu Celibidache, Iancu Dumitrescu réalise ici une musique réellement acousmatique, fondée sur la valeur intrinsèque du son, issu de l'expression spectrale. Jamais froides ou mathématiques, les pièces qui figurent ici, restent malgré tout sensuelles derrière les jeux d'espace tourmentés qui s'animent dans l'alternance des tensions et des repos et des migrations capricieuses de la flûte. De son coté, Ana-Maria Avram, maniant les sonorités de souche spectrale, d'une tradition plus européenne, s'épanouit dans la synthèse des sources instrumentales en intégrant l'imaginaire du son archétype, tout en privilégiant la structure dont elle exploite les différentes colorations dans un camaïeu de résonances. Lignes brouillées, démultipliées, s'inter-modulant en une géologie d'harmoniques fluides, cet album constitue une parfaite introduction à l'úuvre de deux des compositeurs roumains les plus innovateurs et représentatifs de ce siècle."

                                                       S. Belleudy D'ESPINOSE- Paris

Iancu Dumitrescu, Studio Art Zoyd, Maubeuge, France, june 2004

 * "Aulodie Mioritica by Iancu Dumitrescu is a meditation at the edge between life and death, a passionate investigation of the instrumental resonance and the virtuoso "improvisation" is heighten at a very unaccustomed and sophisticated level..." Luis Pérez de ARTEAGA - New York

* "Aulodie Mioritica is an avant-garde music, tellurian and abyssal, exploring the ever heard territories of sounds. Owning to that, the work had its partisans to the last tour of scrutiny..." Pierre MICHOT - Journal de Genève

* "Aulodie Mioritica by Iancu Dumitrescu is a fantasy upon a sound;  that  appears as impressive as possible, tremendous, full of virtuosity."                           Edward GREENFIELD (BBC) - London

* "...Iancu Dumitrescu, compositeur, musicologue, est le chef de file de la jeune musique roumaine, considérée comme l'une des plus intéressante dans le paysage contemporain. Les oeuvres de Dumitrescu se situent très loin des concepts traditionnels, non seulement en matière de son, mais de forme et de structure. Ses principales oeuvres font intervenir le concept d'acousmatique, terme socratique  désignant l'art de cacher l'essence de la source sonore, d'en déguiser l'origine... Sa musique tire ses modèles formels de la structure même du son en une correspondance parfaite de la micro - et de la macro - structure." François DUVILIER  - Ecouter-Voir - Paris

* "Toutefois, un trio (...) de Dumitrescu, dans lequel, au milieu d'un mouvement spectaculaire d'archets, de pizzicati et de sons harmoniques, on fut séduit par la beauté intérieure du climat sonore..."André B. ("Midi Matin"), Nice

*  "As a creator of radical music that breaks convention, riding on the edge of the classical avant-garde (...) Iancu DUMITRESCU has the talent to lure you in, mystify and startle with unnerving furiousity..."

* "Romanian-born Iancu Dumitrescu (b. 1944) has made some of the most radical developments in the treatment of timbre. Though Dumitrescu is a great admirer of Scelsi, he did not discover him until recently. Dumitrescu has said, It's clear that I largely developed my music in the 1972-1975 period before anyone had heard of Scelsi. You could even say that my music contributed to how Scelsi was listened to when his music first became known in the 1980s. The fact that there are parallels has to be read as an aspect of synchronicity.
 Dumitrescu's music is based on the idea of "acousmatics," a Socratic term meaning the intimate exploration of sonic phenomenon. Dumitrescu composes by eliminating everything around the instrument and carefully examining the actual sound.(...) Dumitrescu's "Medium III" (1981) for solo contrabass is one of the strongest examples of his method of timbral development. The piece is as exploration of harmonics and bow control, focusing on the relationship between micro-structure and macro-structure. Dumitrescu carefully subjects the contrabass to several different styles of sul ponticello and col legno techniques resulting in a constantly evolving timbre throughout the piece."                                              Brent FARISS - San Francisco

* "Le dernier concert de la journée était dédié à l'école roumaine que Harry Halbreich considère comme le phénomène le plus fascinant de la musique européenne actuelle. De ce programme nous retiendrons la "Grande Ourse" de Iancu Dumitrescu, (...) aux sons tournants et vrillants, musique d'état..."

* "Iancu Dumitrescu. In the realms of the avant-garde (read: serious, weird and innovative classical music) the countries of Eastern Europe have been notorious as burgeoners of the most experimental and creative talents. The composer under discussion here, however, hails from Romania and is the creator of some of the most radical and inventive music. (...) The work "Cogito/Trompe l'Oeil" is an excellent example of this in a more atmospheric Stockhausen-like manner, whereas "Medium III" features some of the most awesome brain-numbing sonic effects I've heard. Many of the works from this era came to light  via releases on the German 'Edition RZ', revealing to the world a sonic creator of unique talent..."

 * "In the world of Romanian contemporary music, rich and varied as it is, there can surely be no more radical or daringly original a personality than Iancu Dumitrescu. At forty, he has confirmed himself in the triple role of composer, conductor and producer, and finally of writer, as a vital force in new music, not only in Romania, but on the international scene. As leader of the Hyperion Ensemble, which he founded in 1976 and has run ever since - a group comprising some of the most  brilliant instrumentalists of Romania - he has expounded throughout Europe not only his own most important works, but also those of other representatives of the most forward looking wing of Romanian music."    Harry HALBREICH, (Editions Salabert) - Paris

* "...le public niçois avait été fort intrigué - mais visiblement séduit - par la venue de l'ensemble Hyperion, dirigé par Iancu Dumitrescu. Organe principal de la création musicale actuelle en Roumanie, cet ensemble témoigne, dans ses orientations, de la recherche d'une synthèse Orient-Occident; il a développé la pratique de l'improvisation collective, des musiques intuitives, et la référence à l'harmonie de la résonance naturelle des corps sonores. (...) Enfin, Iancu Dumitrescu tire des sonorités inouïes, qu'on croyait réservées au domaine de l'électronique, et crée un atmosphère de méditation aux confins du silence."               GÉRARD  CONDÉ - Le MONDE-  Paris
Hyperion Ensemble at Romanian Atheneum
 

* "The extraordinary and uncategoriseable Dumitrescu / Avram team. The Rolls Royce team. Innovative and profound! Great works! Great Cds!"                Chris  CUTLER - RëR MEGACORP -  London

* " Aulodie mioritica de Iancu Dumitrescu. Musique incantatoire, plus proche, selon l'auteur, des Râgâs de l'Inde que des formes musicales occidentales, elle fait rendre aux instruments des sonorités inouïes et suspend le temps, ponctué seulement par les attaques rageuses de la contrebasse ou le déchaînement des grands tambours..."                                 Gérard CONDÉ - Le MONDE, Paris

* "Iancu Dumitrescu is most impressive when it comes to the art of recording his ideas. No composer has ever had a better ear for the recording process than Dumitrescu - not Stockhausen, not Nono, not Xenakis. Nobody. Not even Masami Akita!"     WEB of MIMICRY, USA
*   "Dumitrescu schreef een magnifiek cellostuk, uitersi precies en  verzorgd, waar de klank van de buciume geimiteerd word: de Roemeense equivalent van de l'Alpenhorn."

 * "Echos lointains. Les oeuvres de Iancu Dumitrescu et d'Ana-Maria Avram font l'objet d'une série de quatre CD publiés par EDITION        MODERN. Personnalité musicale explosive, Dumitrescu est un grand chercheur de sonorités, persévérant explorateur de l'harmonie et du geste instrumental. Sa musique vit de la force, le geste s'y décompose en multiples réverbérations, variations de couleur et d'intentions qui prolongent l'impact et imposent un temps musical propre, méditatif et dynamique..."    Costin CAZABAN - Le Monde de la Musique - Paris

* "Iancu DUMITRESCU /  Ana-Maria AVRAM: (...) Nevertheless (as Adorno said of Webern, contra Tchaikovsky), there is more of the classical dynamic in a few notes by Dumitrescu than in all the works of Reich, Glass and Andrew Lloyd Webber. (...) Works has a seething orchestral work, "Au Delà De Movemur" and a study on a single note, "Monades", all expression achieved through variant timbre. Dumitrescu's music has a visceral, untidy force rare in classical music - the textures of Xenakis pared of the later's Beethovenian ambition, made more focused and linear. Works also features three compositions by Ana-Maria Avram, born in Bucharest in 1961. Wonderful to hear music where textural innovations aren't employed to color pre-existing  structures, but evolve form in process.(...) Seems like these Romanians are engaged in a similar kind of sonic research to that which resulted on the masterpieces of Giacinto  Scelsi and Ennio Morricone: collective  endeavor, genuine "deep listening". The results are similarly overpowering, a million miles from the tooting inconsequence or most of what passes for New Music in the classical world."

 * "On earlier records Iancu Dumitrescu proved to be a radical creator of fascinating music, moving away from the most usual contemporary classical music of the 70's. (...) Iancu Dumitrescu presents three works, two of each are string quartets: "Holzwege" and "Sirius", which both have those typical rasping tones and drones that are distinctly Dumitrescu, oozing dark and ominous, threatening to engulf the listener in mass of staccato's. In between these "Fluxus" contrasts as an almost controlled chaos, with the Romanian National Symphony Orchestra battling it out, like 1000 sirens wailing! Serious disturbing stuff."

 * "Deux des compositeurs les plus importants de Roumanie, Ana-Maria Avram et Iancu Dumitrescu, décrivent leur musique et sa situation dans la Roumanie contemporaine. L'article commence ainsi: "Décembre 1997: un voyage de douze heures en train me mène de Budapest en Hongrie à Bucarest en Roumanie, traversant deux fois le majestueux hémicycle que forment les Carpates. Vue du train, la Roumanie paraît profondément rurale et peu développée, et je me demande comment un mouvement musical d'avant-garde a pu voir le jour ici? S'ils ont pu ouvrir de nouvelles voies en musique, Avram et Dumitrescu ont la conviction que c'est parce qu'ils ont su établir où trouver précisément ces rapports entre l'activité musicale et la vie intérieure qui demeurent inarticulés dans l'apprentissage musical conventionnel. Ceci n'est toutefois pas qu'une question de philosophie ou de motivations artistiques. La réalité psychologique de leur musique est enracinée dans une conception de la réalité acoustique du son, dans une musique fondée sur les harmoniques naturels, qu'on appelle souvent musique spectrale."

"MUSICWORKS" Toronto, Canada

 * "Edition Modern is remarkable and very prolific record label in  Romania and France. It is run by composers and musicians Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram, and by virtue of these artists' relentless creativity and stubbornness the label has reached an international cult status. The music - sometimes labeled "spectral" - is an innovative merger of an original utilization of traditional instruments and modern electronics, rendering a sound web heard nowhere else."

 * "Iancu Dumitrescu create some of the most outstanding music I've ever heard. The pieces here are based on  the concept of 'acousmatique', the intimate exploration of sonic phenomenon. "Medium III", for solo contrabass, and "Cogito", for bass, prepared piano, gong, crystal, and metal objects, both consist of simultaneous exploration of both the very large and very small aspects of sound. While there is little in the way of traditional horizontal movement, i.e. melody - or at least movement rapid enough to detect - the vertical complexity is rich. (...) The result of all of this is an enormous, overtone rich sonic environment in which the listener may freely bathe. For the attentive and sensitive listener, this can be one of the most engaging and rewarding listening experiences imaginable."

 * "Iancu DUMITRESCU and Ana-Maria AVRAM. Four contemporary works recorded live, with one composition each by the four above. They have become leading figures in contemporary classical music, developing a musical language that sweeps boldly from very small scale insect-like sounds to vast noise laden soundscapes. In recent times they have attracted a lot of attention from musicians outside of the classical field, as the music is relevant to the post-ambient, post noise, post classical aesthetic which is the sound of the moment. New pieces by Dumitrescu: "Oiseaux Céléstes" (new computer assisted music) and "Colossus" (for string orchestra and virtual percussions; performed by the Hyperion String Ensemble, conducted by Dumitrescu). New pieces by Ana-Maria Avram: "New Arcana" (for solo bassclarinet and ensemble, performed by Tim Hodgkinson and Hyperion Ensemble), "EC-Static Crickets II" (for string ensemble, performed by Hyperion), "Horridas Nostrae Mentis Purga Tenebras" (computer assisted music for synthesized voices and instruments).
 While the new Romanian school, with Iancu Dumitrescu at the  forefront, is not alone in its search for a spectral approach - hyper-consonant, hyper-harmonic, in the real sense of these terms, working for so long in relative isolation, are the first to have achieved - especially in the work of Iancu Dumitrescu - a real spectral analysis of the interior of the sound,  equivalent to a kind of nuclear fission... "

 * "IANCU DUMITRESCU: "Galaxy"/ "Movemur"/ "Basreliefs" "Reliefs" ED MN 1005. "Galaxy" is a new work, for "Harryphones", percussion & micro-processing, "Movemur" a virtuoso soundwork for 3 contrabasses and percussion, "Reliefs" for 2 orchestras and piano, "Memorial" for string quartet and "Basoreliefs" for orchestra. Each is a gem, each keeps right on top of its moment with no unnecessary note or tone, each tunnels deep into the inner quality of sound. Innovative! Profound! Great works!"          Chris  CUTLER, - London

* "Medium III is a stunning piece written for solo contrabass, performed on this CD by the master bassist Fernando Grillo. You will not believe that a mere solo contrabass could be responsible for the thundering, full resonances and drones punctuated by explosions of acoustic distortion that are heard here. But believe it! There are other performances of this piece that are no less shocking, and all are credited to the solo bass wizardry of Fernando Grillo! Of the five pieces on this disk, two others are particularly outstanding: "Cogito / Trompe l'oeil" with it's incredible instrumentation - prepared piano, two contrabasses (F. Grillo and Ion Ghita), Javanese Gong and  "cristaux et objects metalliques". This piece features some primitive but very effective spatializing techniques. "Aulodie Mioritica" again puts Fernando Grillo as a soloist, but this time he's playing atop the Hyperion Ensemble. God only knows what that means!!! Everything Dumitrescu does is "ambient" in the sense that he employs extended drones and textures and often conveys a sense of wide open space, but certainly "ambient" is the wrong descriptive term! There are also many violent punctuations and moments of vivid expression, all of which is accented by a form of "organic noise". This is all amply demonstrated in this piece! We know there are at least few people out-there who have been waiting a long time for something like this. But we advise those who are ambivalent about 'experimental music', or who adhere mostly to the standards set by Tzadik records: to skip this one."

 * "Iancu Dumitrescu is a Romanian born composer, born in 1944 and one of the new school of that country who eschewed the vagaries of electronics or tape manipulation, to achieve the 'spectral sound' through using only acoustic instruments. He took this direction after about 1968, when the harsh political regime softened up a little and he had had the chance to hear the music of Webern and Schönberg, up to that point a 'forbidden' activity. Although Dumitrescu had undertaken a fairly conventional classical training at school in Bucharest, he now felt inspired to take up a more personal music and followed this course into the 1970s. It began to firm up into a theory of music called 'Acousmatics'.(...) Dumitrescu knows his sounds only really live through their interpreters, and realizes the process of scoring can be somewhat unstable. He's been known to hear an ideal music in his dreams, the perfect sound, only to wake up heartbroken at the impossibility of scoring it. Yet the experience leaves a stamp on his psyche, something he can work with.(...) Number systems have a part too: Dumitrescu has intuitive theories about the 'inner structure' of numbers (inspired by his studies of the philosophical works of Husserl), and is convinced that the pause is absolutely specific to the activity, they counter-balance in direct proportion to each other. This principle is used to arrive at a score which does indeed seem in harmony with powerful natural forces -and the method of realization seems a lot more compassionate than Stockhausen arrogantly commanding his players to 'play with the rhythm of the universe'."

 * "In a word - MONUMENTAL!  For a number of years now I've marveled over the sheer explosive energy coming out of my speakers on pieces such as "Pierres Sacrées". (...) "Grande Ourse" is a mesmerizing and intimidating piece that feels so big I'm going to have to leave any idiotic attempt at description aside. With the glaring exception of "Pierres Sacrées" (which is just so obviously incredible) you will have to let some of this music "happen" to you rather than trying to immediately hear some overt genius within it. (...)"

 * "A thundering, urban edifice illuminated only by flying sparks and reverberating with the hollow boom of deflected metal. But even the most staggering constructions are put together brick by brick, or note by note, and Dumitrescu pays great attention to detail, releasing vast amounts of energy like a nuclear explosion from the tiniest components."

 *  "Iancu Dumitrescu: Hailed by many in Europe as one of the most intriguing and innovative composers of our time, Dumitrescu remains almost unknown in the United States. Alas, the dearth of specialized performers, the timidity of symphonic organizations and niggardly arts funding will keep Dumitrescu's music out of US concert halls for the foreseeable future, so if you missed the program, seek out the recordings! What makes Dumitrescu's music so compelling? Listen for the searing details burbling a top massive planes of sound; the  forthright and imaginative use of extended instrumental techniques; and the sure sense of register and form which somehow transforms acoustic instruments into otherworldly electro-acoustic timbres. As music assisted by computer, both "Pulses and Universe Reborn" and "Étoiles Brisées (I)" roil and rumble unlike any other electro-acoustic music I have heard. Aside from Stockhausen, Dumitrescu is the only high profile  composer (that I can think of) who has a direct hand in his recordings and runs his own record label.(...)"

 * "Iancu Dumitrescu (1944) & Ana-Maria Avram (1961): A rustling of strings (though it could be leaves or thoughtsÖ) begins this second CD from Iancu Dumitrescu's Romanian label Edition Modern. The sequence of "Au dela de Movemur" repeats itself time and again, getting more intense-closer - as the double basses and other string instruments join the initial rustlers for the seven-second sequences, piling up and spreading out over the inner realms of listening. This could possibly be compared to some of Giacinto Scelsi's works, or as a cut-up of some of his works into shorter, repeated and varied events. The National Chamber Orchestra of Romania interprets this Dumitrescu piece with sensitivity and accuracy, displaying a beautiful tonal web. "Monades" (first movement) floats in just an inch above the floor, like a mist from a secret, green-lit dimension of the soul, or maybe from the mist of the meadow at dusk, when the fairies and the elves hover over the grass, wet from dew, in a silent minuet of the tales. The touch is very light, very passionate, like the fingertips of your lover on your face, calming, inspiring, furthering, transformingÖThis is a vibrant, intense, slow and sensitive act of love, in which the ecstasy moves you through a metamorphosis to a higher level of consciousness, in an extra-anatomical, out-of-the-body experience. The second movement strengthens the impression of being in that spiritual, out-of-the-body sphere, where real reality - which is spiritual (Read Emanuel Swedenborg or "the Tibetan Book of the Dead"!) - takes on the colors of the rainbow in a spiritual light that is the strongest light imaginable, like the one Saul saw on the way to Damascus, when he was transformed to Paul, or like the light the people who walk in the Valley of the Shadow of Death will see, according to the Bible. The music carries you in a hovering, weightless, aimless clarity of thought, and your mind is a mirror that reflects the mysteries of spirit in spaceÖ Ana-Maria Avram's first entry on this ongoing series of issues from Edition Modern is "Ekâgrâta". This piece starts right off with a splintering percussion, interspersed with sharp blows of wind instruments. The scraping sounds of strings blend in finer touches with light-spoken xylophone-like sounds as the introductory percussions ease off. After a shorter period of gathering of strength a whole amassment of percussions explode in dark colors, in which the flickering lights of wind instruments blink. The abruptness of some passages contrast sharply to the pieces by Dumitrescu heard before on the CD. Further into "Ekâgrâta" I sense the feeling of ancient Greek (pre-Socratic) Mediterranean tales, in which the reflections of the golden sun on the blue expanses of the sea fondle the progression of events. This pearly, lighter percussive color blends with ornithological occurrences in the string section, advancing the music further into the realm of ancientness. The piece disappears in a distant flickering of light in the warmth of night  across the Mediterranean Sea. "Signum Gemini" is Ana-Maria Avram's second piece, and the first on CD in which she utilizes tape with the ensemble. The clarinet gets the show on the road, and at first it is almost like a piece for clarinet solo. The percussion gradually moves in with light metallic, steel blue sounds, joined by dark brown drums and the deep registers of the prepared piano. Like in "Ekâgrâta", the music is harsher, more shattering, more obviously varied on a rougher scale, than the pieces we've heard from Iancu Dumitrescu on this CD. Avram is also the composer of the last piece on the CD; "Zodiaque III". Here she excels in a magic, eerie aura of the tape music. The tape part is also spatial, moving around in the listening space, and the electroacoustic chords are drone-like, stretched, ominous, foreboding. Short, glistening events vibrate like a swarm of mosquitoes or lightning bugs over the drone, and percussive eruptions explode momentarily. The sound that draws your attention the most is the electronics on tape, making me think of Folke Rabe's "Was??", the second version. The spectrum of the overtones shifts slowly,  gradually, as Avram's piece drifts on through the space-time continuum, and you feel adrift yourself while listening, and it is a little uncomfortable; not all pleasure, but darker notions too, as if you have to avoid  falling into a bottomless pit, or as if you have to hold on desperately as gravity gradually ceases its pull on your physical bodyÖ  Even identity seems to loose its hold on you as the pulses of the tape music edge their way into the inner reaches of that which is you, dispersing your youness far and wide in space-timeÖ and inside, inside-way inside - in the middle of that which is you, sharp shrills of metallic percussion focuses your whole attention to that theoretical point without extension, which is your sense of you, and the hypnotic sounds revolve around this theoretical point, like matter revolving around a black hole of Space, eventually being sucked in behind the horizon of eventsÖ"

          Ingvar LOCO NORDIN "LIBRARY OF SILENCE" -  Sweden
Ana-Maria AVRAM

 * "Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu and his associate, Ana-Maria Avram, leading figures in the Eastern European school of modern classical music have issued many stunning works through the years, but this is the first to be issued in America. (...) By far the most powerful is Dumitrescu's 14 minute scorcher, "New Meteors & Pulsars" for electronics and percussion (featuring Cutler as soloist), inspired by the experience of witnessing a meteor impact, this massively  dark clamorous composition is a series of enormous explosions, interspersed with rumbling percussives..."

               (S.P.) - Los Angeles

Recording In RTBF with  Dumitrescu's "Dérives Chaotiques II". Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles, Cond: jean-Paul DESSY
 

* "Iancu Dumitrescu, Romanian composer (Sibiu, 1944), the most famous and audacious of the young school in his country, one of the undeniable heads of the current "avant-garde". He represents the "avant-garde" without compromise, the power of invention, the experimental audacity, a taste for intellectual speculation, an irresistible creative impetus, rare at this level. He is the dominant personality of today's music in his country..."          Alfred  HOFFMAN -  Bucharest

 * "The Dumitrescu track appeals to me very highly. Called "New Meteors & Pulsars", it was composed in 1998 after Dumitrescu witnessed a meteor or asteroid colliding with the earth. To read his vivid description of the event you'd think he was standing right next to the point of impact, surviving unscathed by some miracle - but then someone as blessed as Dumitrescu must have an entire division of Guardian Angels to watch over his enlightened soul. He took the falling star as a personal warning into his assisted composition. It is a terrifying listen, and not simply because of the loud and sudden explosive, atonal crashings that it whoops out at you, scaring the living daylights out of you and your pet cat. No, the terror he evokes is deep and metaphysical, saying something profound about mankind and his place in the universe and somehow into currents of primal energy that have existed for thousands of years before civilization. This is similar I think to his equally awe-inspiring 1991 composition "Pierres Sacrées", available on ED MN 1003. Also here: "Nouvelle Axe" composed by Ana-Maria Avram in 1998 and played by the Hyperion Ensemble - where she claims 'all the action is in the details and tiny nuances'. The basis of the piece is the 'sound-noise relation and the relation of symmetry around a central axis'"

 *  "Although two of the most compelling and exciting living composers - at least in my opinion - the work of Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu  and Ana-Maria Avram remain largely unknown and underappreciated (...) "Mnémosyne"... On 6 pieces 3 by each composer, virtuoso flute and percussion players deftly invoke tactile and complex sounds and textures that imply the wondrous joy of wild, adventurous discovery. Iancu Dumitrescu as a creative force stands along Scelsi, Xenakis and Ligeti in his deeply insightful command of composition to develop instrumental texture far beyond one's conception of traditional tools. His near obscurity is puzzling and dismaying, but recent features in the publications "Resonance", "Bananafish" and "Musicworks" may change this.  Avram's work, heard here for the first time by me, is no less compelling and open new avenues of tonal synthesis and design, mixing melodic concerns with an acute appreciation of texture, especially on the solo bass flute piece, played expertly by Isabelle Hureau. The death of compositional music?! Dumitrescu and Avram are successful rebuttals."

 * "For a music that uncompromisingly addresses the future, opening us to an entirely new and unheard universe of sound, Iancu Dumitrescu's art is nonetheless grounded in tradition, and nourished on the fertile resources of the Romanian land. He exemplarily embodies a school, unique in the world, which has found in its own ancestral roots the means to go forwards in the spirit of the utmost adventure. Thus has grown a music that is absolutely new, and yet accessible, comprehensible, and far from all abstract speculation and laboratory experiment - a music that draws its new sonorities from fundamentally simple and "natural" means, without recourse to "heavy" IRCAM - type technologies. A bit of electro-acoustics, some amplification, a synthesizer or two, very little surely, alongside the work being done here on the radical renewal of the instrumental sound itself. For all that this emphatically micro-intervalic music is constantly exploding the boundaries of the tempered scale, it never sounds "dissonant"; it simply pursues its search for the most remote harmonics in the spectrum."

 *  "Iancu Dumitrescu -  The sound creeps on you, appears out of nowhere, out of a distant circumstance, growing in volume and presence, taking on almost frightening proportionsÖIt's the first piece on Iancu Dumitrescu's first CD; "Medium III", for double bass. Forget all you knew about double bass! I give the same advice concerning the double bass on this Dumitrescu album as I give when I introduce people to the violin recordings of wizard Malcolm Goldstein; don't expect any sound hitherto associated with the instrument! Yes, Dumitrescu is the composer here, but the double bass player is Fernando Grillo, and what he does to the double bass is simply amazing. A whole new sound world rises out of the big lady of an instrument! Long, outstretched sequences of a drone like quality suddenly get cut up by staccatos that whirl at you like revolving dump trucks. You sort of feel that you have to get out of the way, but you sit back and let the richness of the sound web immerse you, and carry you off to who knows what kind of future! By this you understand that the double bass is really closely microphoned. You live the life of the double bass through this recording. Sometimes the music of Iancu Dumitrescu is defined as "spectral" or "acousmatic", which hints at the way the composer and the player intimately explore the sonic phenomena in structures of a perfect relationship between micro and macro, in a composing and execution act that must be guided by a right-on intuition. The result is spellbinding! "Cogito/Trompe l'Oeil" for prepared piano, two double basses, Javanese gongs, crystals & metallic objects is the second track on the CD. It starts with a stereophonic distribution of rustling little sounds, soon joined by the higher spheres of the double basses. The basic impression is closely related to the former piece, but the richer instrumentation allows for further explorations, in a primeval tour-de-force of metallics and formidable spectrums of sharp and hollow sounds. If you learn to listen (you have to, you must practice some if you're a newcomer to Romanian spectrals) you will take up residence in this acoustic feast for a good while. Iancu Dumitrescu's sound space is addictive! This piece may well be a revelation to anybody who allows himself the benefit of exploration, of the joy of discovery! Piece no. 3 is "Aulodie Mioritica (gamma)" for double bass and orchestra. Though it continues in the same spirit as the former two pieces, it commences more cautiously, swarming the double bass with a circular movement of rustles, as the orchestra appears out of the darkness with heavy humps of the drums, punctuating the sounding space in a  very spatial, pointillist way, with warm, brown, weighty downbeats, sparsely distributed. At times whole explosive events cut forward in the static and vibrating mass of tones, like a demolition crew cutting holes in a brick wall. As the dust dies down birdlike chirps out of the orchestra transmits real down home jungle visions, and it strikes me how this modern music can induce all kinds of associations in your mind, to green rain forests in a pristine past as well as to gray and black industrial scenes where the smokestacks stand like endless stabs along the horizon! "Perspectives au Movemur" for string quartet is the fourth entry. This is indeed a string quartet, which begins beautifully in light caresses, soft strokes of the bow, intermingling in complex chirpings of birds of the mind, loosening the grip and letting you fly off, to hover suspended above the little instrument group, in airy demonstrations of good thoughts and introspective reflections. Your temples are being softly massaged by these stroking sounds, permitting you the hypnosis of a mindful rest, as the tip of your nose is the focus of your whole attention, in a meditation that spreads the warmth of good temper throughout your anatomy. It's physical and spiritual all at once, and the smell of incense is pleasurable in your listening space. The concluding work on this Dumitrescu CD is "Apogeum" for 22 wind instruments & 3 percussion groups. The immediate impression at first is that of lonely lighthouses out on the coast, as I've heard them in Alvin Curran's "Maritime Rites". The lonely calls stay far away behind the scene as the closer mass of micro sounds draws small, quick, never-ending figures with little shining lights in the dark. It's like a desperate communication hunger, from a world trying to connect, with only fear and horror to convey to anybody in a distant world who might be listening. "Apogeum" is a peculiar and touching work, much more emotional and bothering than the other pieces on the CD. It has a darkness to it that you seldom experience in modern music. I can think of one other piece with a similar feeling, conveyed through different means; Folke Rabe's "Cyclone" - an electroacoustic work that distributes an overwhelming hopelessness across your perception. Iancu Dumitrescu's "Apogeum" is also very, very beautiful, with a mental downdraft that could make you jump off mountain... An incredible first CD from the workshop of Iancu Dumitrescu! "

 * "IANCU DUMITRESCU, a Romanian composer, does not incorporate improvisation into his works per se, but precisely scores his pieces for instruments that he knows will act unpredictably. Sometimes his works consist of a single musician sawing away repeatedly on one string, which resonates wildly and varyingly according to the manner in which it's played. DUMITRESCU composes directly on the instruments themselves, and acknowledges that repeatability of performance is not the goal. In a recent interview in "Resonance" magazine DUMITRESCU explained, "There is definitely not the idea of perfecting something, of making the sounds fixed and perfect for all time. The point is to find out how they can be different every time but in exactly the way that is right for that particular time. So the final stability is a relative one". He takes the attitude of a scientist, writing down the variations of the sounds that emerge from his instruments and finding a range of predictability that then establishes the parameters of his written score. Because the manner in which instruments are played affects the outcome of his music so drastically, DUMITRESCU has formed his own ensemble of players that he has trained, and whose touch he can predict."

 * "Nearly 10 years ago I discovered the music of Iancu Dumitrescu's "Medium Il" / "Cogito" LP with RZ Editions in Berlin. In this way I found the raw, cut-up assemblages of the former and the long, intimate movements in detailed sound works of the latter. Much later I heard about spectral music and learned that Dumitrescu was Romanian, born in 1944. After listening to more of his records, released by Editions Modern, I started to dive more seriously into his music and found that the synthesized delirium of serialism seemed to shift more toward the sound and tools of electroacoustics..."

 * "...The music of Romania's leading composer Iancu Dumitrescu is spectral, electroacoustic, but above all it is a coherent totality grounded in a different conception. Of all living composers, Dumitrescu is the one who has most exploded sound. Dumitrescu's work is a negation, from the depths, of everything in contemporary music symptomatic of distraction, of banalisation, and of a radical loss of purpose. His music is not a new convolution in the knot of modern music, but an unraveling of the curse. (...) One of the first pieces I heard was "Pierres Sacrées";  I was very struck - as were many other people - by the sound of this music. It seemed quite unlike the usual sound of contemporary composed music. It had far more distortion, noise and violence. There seemed to be a shift away from stable fundamental frequencies, and a greater emphasis on the unstable aspects of sound..."  Tim HODGKINSON -  RESONANCE - London

Iancu Dumitrescu, London, september 2004