Vasile Iovu
Pan, the God of shepherds,
fell in love with a beatiful mortal girl named Syrinx. The girl, unwilling
to share the feelings of Pan, threw herself into a river. In the very
place of her death a reed has grown. Pan made a pipe out of this reed
and wandered about all Hellas with it, singing his unhappy and unfulfilled
love. So says the myth.
The God pas left in the tubes of the Pan-pipe his beautiful song. Touching
this precious reminder with the kiss of the soul, an artist is every time
reviving the force and emotion of an everlasting and for ever unfulfilled
passion.
Vasile lovu was born with that holy song in his tool and he never lost
it. Among the professionals of oral Romanian folk tradition Vasile Iovu
is a name of higher class, continuing the long line of our Masters of
art, from Barbu Lautaru, Grigoras Dinicu, Fanica Luca to the too early
gone Valeriu Hanganu. Maestro Vasile lovu, as well as his colleagues Gheorghe
Zamfir, Sofia Vicoveanca, Nicolac Botgros, Lucretia Ciobanu, is a prominent
representative of Romanian musical thinking, feeling and ethos.
Vasile lovu is the descendant of a long line of farmers who settled long
ago in Lapusna district and made deep roots there making space in the
deep forest for their village they named Bardaru (after «barda»
-axe, using which they snatched from the forest their place to live, work
and stay). He was born here in 1950, in the family of Maria and Gavril
lovu. Three of their six children -Veronica, Vasile and Gheorghe - were
to become musicians. From the 6th form Vasile is studying flute at the
Special music school (now "Ciprian Porumbescu" Lyceum) and later
on, in 1667-1971, at the "Gavriil Musicescu" Conservatoire (Music
Academy) from Chisinau, class of flute and orchestra direction. He began
to sing at Panpipe as an amateur, urged by Dumitru Blajinu, director of
«Folclor» Orchestra of the National Radio and TV Company.
But the encounter with Gheorghe Zamfir at Vilnius, in 1971. has ben decisive.
Zamfir taught him the correct position of the Pan-pipe, in the right band,
and blessed him to go on up to the heights of Romanian folk music. The
blessing of the First Master of Pan-pipe proved to be a magic -Vasile
lovu is the first professional Pan-pipe player on the Prut left bank,
first teacher in the class of Pan-pipe at the Music Academy at Chisinau,
as well as the author of the first .Method of Pan-pipe" for secondary
and high schools.
The area of his interests
is very extended -folk music, symphony music, chamber music, even pop-music.
Lyrical songs and folk dances, doinas and virtuosity pieces make his repertorie
as a folk player, repertoire selected with great care and much taste.
His preferencies are obviously lyric, he selects pieces of rare beauty
("Song of love", "Urge on your oxes, Gheorghe" and
so on) which are played with an overwhelming sweetness, but he is never
abusing that tempting and dainty scheme. Bearer of a basically lyrical
sensibility, his love songs are a pure musical anthology of sung
love caresses.
Vasile lovu is a real
virtuoso of the Pan-pipe. Always thoroughly worked and polished to the
last detail, his pieces are never overcrowded by superfluous variations
("Hora (dance) in taps", "The Belt"). His Pan-pipe
is remarkably present in the tone-poem "This beautiful land"
by T. Chiriac. He performed with a number of symphonic orchestras: Philharmonic
Orchestra of Chisiniu (director Timofei Gurtovoi), Orchestra of the National
Radio and TV (director Gheorghe Mustea), Philharmonic Orchestra of Tashkent
(director Vladimir Fedosecv) and State
Symphonic Orchestra of Moscow (director Giansug Kahidze).
Possessing the technique of the academic flute, he encountered no difficulty
to apply it in playing other instruments, especially folk ones - fluier,
caval, ocarina -ancestors of the flute. The player senses with great precision
the character of each instrument, using their finest and subtlest possibilities.
A
professional connoisseur of the oral musical tradition, Vasile lovu plays
not only real ground-rooted folk music, but his own folkstyle music too.
In his own compositions (doinas "Thc tears of Prut river", "ln
the memory of Mother") he tends to an art which could personalize
him. Musical discourse is organized by the theme development principle,
employing melodic fragments, motivated fractions, other methods of composition.
His doinas are significant from this point of view by their extremely
melodic plasticity, an elaborate tuning and a well-balanced construction.
The accompanying formula is most often a chamber orchestra a string quartet,
an orgue. In his harmonic syntai he tends to pass over the traditional
tonal homophony, using chords of different structures ("ln the memory
of Mother", Coda). And this is not a point in itself, but a choice
justified by the message of the composition.
Vasile lovu has won the consideration of melomans all over the world. He made tours on all the continents, with various orchestras and groups, and have been applauded in the USA, England, Japan, Australia, Thilippinet, Germany, India, Austria, France and many other countries. Vasile lovu is a vigurous tree grown on the left bank of the Prut, but his roots are spreading all over the Romanian land. The fruits of this tree are the soul and spirit of all Romanians reflected in music.
Tudor CHIRIAC
Download *.mp3 Vasile Iovu Potpourri 3.52 MB; Windows-Movie Vasile Iovu in Concert 1.93 MB
He was special guest on the SWISS panflute seminar 2005.