Oltea Șerban-Pârâu
Dr. Oltea Șerban-Pârâu
In the early twentieth century, Romanian music made a significant leap in the area of complex composition, achieving this progress in an extremely short period of time and with George Enescu as its principal proponent.
Nevertheless, in the same period, more than ever before, there was also a secondary level, at which numerous composers made significant achievements in symphonic, choral, chamber and ballet music. Without these composers, Romanian music would never have attained its present level of development, even if they did not forge for themselves an international career comparable to that of George Enescu.
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Short Biography
Dr. Oltea Șerban-Pârâu • musicologist and music critic, holder of a PhD in Musicology. She has substantial experience in the field of cultural management and in the Romanian press, ranging from radio and newspapers to television and on-line cultural journalism. She has earned her PhD in Musicology from the Bucharest National University of Music and is a member of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania, of the “Mihail Jora” Union of Music Critics and of the Romanian Association of Women in Arts.
She has written more than two thousand articles on musical subjects for the press. Likewise, she has made hundreds of radio broadcasts and appeared in numerous television programmes. She has been awarded a number of major prizes, including the National Audio-visual Council Prize for Originality in Radio Broadcasting and the Journalism Prize of the Romanian Union of Composers and Musicologists. She has written and translated articles on Romanian composers for the Larousse Dictionary of Great Musicians, and was responsible for the music section of the Encyclopaedic Dictionary and Smaller Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Her career has also encompassed activity as a musical, artistic and press adviser to musical institutions and prestigious national and international festivals, as well as an artistic director of music and cultural tours, namely of the Travelling Piano, the Duel of Violins, Enescu’s Violin in the Romanian Villages, the Golden Flute and the Three Divas.
She was director of the Radio Romantic commercial station for seven years, from 1995 to 2003, and between 2005 and 2013 she was director of the Radio Romania Culture public station. She has managed the Radio Romania Cultural Media Centre from 2013 to 2015: in such quality she coordinated the GAUDEAMUS International Book & Education Fair, the activity of the Casa Radio Publishing House, RadiRo – the International Festival of Radio Orchestras and Grand Prix Nova – The International Festival of Radio Drama. From 2009 to 2015 she has been the artistic director of the Romanian Radio Orchestras and Choirs. Currently she holds the position of Management Advisor at Radio Romania Cultural Media Centre and general delegate for RadiRo – the International Festival of Radio Orchestras, organized by Radio Romania.