The Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra (OPMC) has crowned its 2025 European tour with a resounding success in Bucharest, the final stop after acclaimed performances in Poland, Slovenia and Greece…
The Principality’s flagship orchestra appeared for the first time at Romania’s prestigious George Enescu International Festival, performing in the storied Romanian Athenaeum.
Under the baton of its artistic and musical director Kazuki Yamada, the OPMC offered a programme celebrating both Franco-Romanian musical heritage and the orchestra’s own history with Enescu’s works.
The first evening paired the composer’s evocative “Isis” with Maurice Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand, featuring Argentine pianist Nelson Goerner, and Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 “Organ” with Vlad Visinescu at the console. The concerts placed Monaco’s orchestra alongside a stellar line-up of ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Rotterdam Philharmonic, underlining its international stature.
The Bucharest engagement also revived a historic link. In the early 1990s the OPMC, under Laurence Foster, recorded several world premieres of Enescu’s works, helping to spread his music beyond Romania. Returning to the composer’s homeland three decades later was described by the musicians as “a homecoming.”
The festival’s second night, featured Ravel’s Concerto in G with the legendary Martha Argerich, who, in a rare concession, shared a few words with journalists afterwards. Her encores with Goerner, including Ravel’s “Idylle des pagodes,” drew standing ovations from a packed house.
For Monaco, the OPMC’s debut at the Enescu Festival reaffirmed the Principality’s cultural reach well beyond its borders. The warm reception in Bucharest closed a four-country tour that showcased the orchestra’s versatility and Monaco’s ongoing investment in world-class artistic excellence.
