Teo Gheorghiu

The opening of this album reflects my initiation to Romania and its musical landscape.

Der 22-jährige Pianist Teo Gheorghiu gehört zu den erfolgreichsten Nachwuchstalenten seiner Generation und geniesst seit seinem Erfolg als «Vitus» im gleichnamigen Film von Fredi Murer in der Schweiz zu Recht einen Sonderstatus.

The opening of this album reflects my initiation to Romania and its musical landscape. It was as a teenager that I first experienced George Enescu’s «Romanian Rhapsody No. 1», at the Enescu Festival in Bucharest no less - an unforgettable whirlwind of joyous tunes arranged in perfect chaos, bouncing off a kaleidoscope of folk colours. Discovering the solo piano version by the composer himself years later, I dived straight in and realised I was missing a third hand. Enescu had squeezed almost all the parts of a symphony orchestra into the ‘reduced’ score and the challenge was to arrange it in a way to make it humanly playable on the piano. Teo Gheorghiu

One hot summer day, I headed due south from London and crossed France and Spain on my road bike. Challenging it was, yet beautiful, emotional and colourful all at once - while pedaling thousands of kilometers, the journey brought me closer to my innermost core.

The film tells the story of a highly-gifted boy whose parents have demanding and ambitious plans for him - they want him to become a pianist.