A Young Romani violin player dreams about becoming an international musician and prove what he can do.
The small concert hall of the Romanian Athenaeum from Bucharest is almost full. Musicologists, parents, music teachers or simple spectators wait for the concert of the scholars of the Musicians & Singers Union from Romania (UNIMIR), at which 5 young people participate with special musical performances. Mircea Dumitrescu, a Romani boy of 16 years old, nicknamed „little Paganini”, talks to his mother for a few minutes and to Olivia Papa, the guiding teacher, then he goes to prepare himself for entering the stage. He is not nervous, although he will play the violin musical compositions of Fritz Kreisler, George Enescu and three duos by Dimitri Șostakovici. For him, such concerts are rather rehearsals than a challenge.
Mircea started studying violin even from the age of 5, when his grandfather from his father’s side gave him for the first time to read a part. The boy had been discovered by one of the music teachers from the kindergarten and he told his parents that Mircea should be given to an instrument because he has ‘’an absolute hearing”. The family decided that the easiest instrument for Mircea would be the violin. His great grandfather had been a bricklayer, but he had also practised fiddling, so that he could teach his grandson the basic concepts.
A few years followed in which Mircea had rehearsals for 4 hours a day. He says that his great grandfather was very tough with the training, but he knows that everything was for his own sake: „he told me: do you want to get to fiddling or to garbage or to iron or you want to become a successful violin player?” Because he knew that it’s difficult to be a fiddler and because he wanted that Mircea could reach excellence, the great gradfather guide him towards classical music. At 7 he had an entrance examination at the Musical School „George Enescu” and, within an audition for testing the musical skills, he played Menuet by Luigi Boccherini. The play was included in the 4th grade pupils repertoire, and the evaluating teachers were amazed that Mircea managed so well.
After other 2 young people who played within the scholars concert from UNIMIR, the presenter announces that it follows ‘’another miracle”, and Mircea, together with the teacher who will play together with him the piano, enters the stage. The boy takes a small bow and smiles shyly before adjusting his violin bow and to put slowly the violin under his chin. 2 or 3 chords help him to calibrate better the instrument. He remains still for a few seconds and he looks with en empty expression, then he starts the first notes from a musical composition by Fritz Kreisler. He uses the bow easily, and his fingers pass quickly over the strings from the violin’s handle. The shiny instrument, brownish – reddish, makes full sounds, and Mircea plays the chords with confident movements behind which are found years of rehearsals and competitions. Transposed in what he plays, the young violin player looks in a focused way the strings found at only a few centimeters away and, sometimes, closes his eyes for a few seconds. After Kreisler, the boy changes to a musical composition by George Enescu, then he is applauded for a long time by the listeners from the concert hall who until then had sat looking fixedly at the stage.
Mircea’s route in the Musical School „George Enescu” was fulminating; the boy has always returned with prizes from competitions. He remembers that in the 1st grade the guiding teacher gave him an unusual repertoire for a boy of his age – Presto de Bach and Caprice 19 by Paganini. The grandmother says that at the Ceremony Garabet Avachian, the first competition at which he took part in 2006, Mircea presented himself with a difficult piece – Allegro by Joseph Fiocco. The boy only just finished the 1st grade, and this piece was one included in the 8th grade repertoire, but he amazed his teachers with his skills. The performances continued and Mircea started participating at competitions also abroad (especially in Italy), supported with sponsorships or grants obtained from foundations. In the majority of the competitions, the young violin player succeeded in winning either the 1st prize, or the absolute prize. The grandmother says that musicians and teachers started telling him the word „master” ever since the boy was in the 2nd grade. The successes he had at the competitions at which he took part brought him also the nickname of „little Paganini”. The young boy and his family say that the name is exaggerated and that they do not agree with it because Paganini was a unique musician.
Also the successes brought Mircea difficulties at school. Even if he was respected by the teachers and musicians with whom he worked, the boy was discriminated by the classmates because he was talented and he was Romani. He couldn’t integrate because, says he, the other children were envious. His parents moved him from one class to another when he was in the 6th grade because, while they were playing, some classmates hit him on his fingers and they told him he is a gypsy. The boy says that this didn’t affect him, but only made him be even more ambitious – „you can tell me that I am also a gypsy and whatever you like, but I will have to study twice more, three times more, to prove what I can do. To prove that, look, he is a gypsy, but he makes a good thing”. The boy continued the high school too at George Enescu, and now he is in the 10th grade.
Mircea plays the 3 duos by Șostakovici together with a colleague one year younger, to whom he smiled encouragingly before starting. The two followed each other carefully throughout the duos and looks for their eyes in order to synchronize even better. The girl has in front of her a wooden stand on which the papers with scores stay, and Mircea plays freely the pieces. After the duos by Șostakovici, the Young people go out of the stage. The applauses from the hall still continue for about half a minute. The three decide to play even the soundtrack of the movie ‘’Scent of a woman’’, so they re-enter the masked door on the left side of the stage. It isn’t the first time when Mircea and his colleague play this duo. They participated also at a flash mob realized by an association which promotes chances equality and they played the soundtrack even in a mall from Bucharest.
After the final chords of the soundtrack, the three grab their hands and they come in front of the stage, while the spectators applaud enthusiastically. The boys smiles openly, then the players take a bow. Carefully, Mircea lets first the teacher, then his colleague, to go out of the door from the stage’s side.
Another piano song played by the student at the University of Music from Bucharest mark the end of the concert of the scholars. With the violin in his hand, Mircea enters the hall again and smiles a little embarrassed. He is stopped after only a few steps by different people who congratulate him and to whom the Pope joins. Behind the concert hall of spectators, his mother waits for him near the violin stand. She usually takes care at the end of the performances that the instrument is placed carefully again in the box. The boy comes and leaves the violin, then he returns in a hurry to the group of people who were waiting for him and from where even the Pope called him.
At present, Mircea has in his record over 50 first prizes at national competitions and 18 international prizes and other distinctions of laureate in competitions abroad. He gave up recently to the participation at a competition from Iași because he doesn’t have time and he tries to go to the important ones. Even if he is a pupil at a vocational high school, Mircea will have to pass in two years’ time the Baccalaureate examination the same as all the other high school students. He admits that he manages with difficulty because he cannot keep up the pace – if he goes to competitions this means he is absent from school. The subjects’ recuperation is difficult because he has a busy schedule, but he hopes he will finish well the 12th grade when he has to take also a Certificate for music. For the time being he focuses on training and the family tries to help him as much as they can; his mother & father (who suffers from hypo-acusis) are unemployed, so the grandmother is the main support.
He feels appreciated, but he knows it is a lot of work. For this year he obtained a sponsorship from the Foundation Princess Margareta and he participates at two masterclasses (private sessions taught by musicians for very talented young people) in Romania & Germany.
This article can also be read here http://narratory.ro/maestrul-arcusului/
