condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (minimal sticker removal residue on front and 1/4" sticker removal on back)

Two Romanian composers who worked in the mid-twentieth century with almost no international visibility, and whose music belongs to a tradition of art song and chamber writing that sits at a different angle from the spectral and avant-garde work more commonly associated with Romanian contemporary music.

Hilda Jerea (1916-1980) studied with Mihail Jora and Florica Musicescu in Bucharest, then with Noël Gallon in Paris and Pál Kadosa in Budapest. She was a pianist, conductor, and composer who taught at the Bucharest Conservatory and in 1962 founded the Musica Nova Chamber Orchestra, which she led on tours across Europe. Her Lieduri (Songs) here - sung by tenor Valentin Teodorian - belong to a lineage of Romanian art song inflected by both the French mélodie and Eastern European folk intonation: formally cultivated, harmonically modern without being abrasive, the voice at the center.

Felicia Donceanu (1931-2022) was a painter, sculptor, pianist, and composer whose work received the Romanian Academy's George Enescu Prize. She was particularly noted for her harp writing and chamber music, and her presence in Romanian composition circles was sustained over six decades. Ponti Euxini (Euxine Shores - the ancient Greek name for the Black Sea) and Clepsidra (Water Clock) offer two different registers of her chamber language: the former coastal and atmospheric, the latter structured by the measured rhythms suggested by the title, for oboe, clarinet, soprano, harp, and percussion.

A rare and important document of a dimension of Romanian music that has been almost entirely ignored by the reissue and archival recovery of recent years. Original Electrecord pressing.