ENCORE is a project dedicated to contemporary Romanian music, led by pianist Adriana Toacsen, a passionate advocate of this repertoire. The project is a pioneering initiative that brings together musicians and audiences through a type of creation that has been little promoted in recent years – Romanian piano music. ENCORE places the encore—the essence of musical pleasure—at the service of the relationship between the audience and contemporary music.
The encore is spotlighted as the main character through 12 contemporary Romanian works: 4 already composed, 4 commissioned from established composers, and 4 selected through a Competition for composers under 30 years old.
The project includes:
A website with information: interviews with musicians, an interactive performer’s journal, and more.
A tour of 5 concerts in major cultural centers across Romania.
Artist Talk sessions during the concerts.
An audio album featuring the project’s compositions.
A score collection with the works submitted to the competition.
The power of the encore in concerts, though subtle, is considerable. In the structured world of classical music, encores embody surprise, nonconformity, flamboyance, the atypical… and they often serve as a powerful tool for connecting with the audience, but above all, for embedding the music in their memory. After the concert’s emotions have settled, when both musicians and listeners are in a state of grace, this miniature musical form—like a capsule of musical essence—comes to strengthen the bond between performer and audience.
The desire to hear again something we have enjoyed, or to prolong the pleasure of a concert, has probably existed as long as music itself. Yet the term “encore,” borrowed from French, is much more recent. It first appeared in The Spectator newspaper in 1712, when an author, writing under a pseudonym, noted: “I observe that it has become a custom that whenever someone is particularly pleased with a song, at the call of ‘encore’ or ‘altro volto,’ the performer is so kind as to sing it again.”
For musicians, the encore is a chance to step outside the formal program and astonish the audience with a piece that showcases their virtuosity on their instrument. It is usually a short work, serving as a quintessence of musical pleasure.
