October 01, 2005

The Romanian Mozart Society (SRM) is a non-governmental organization based in Cluj. SRM is registered in Romania and it is affiliated to the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. SRM publishes its yearly reports in Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum.
The SRM was founded on September 6, 1991, and it was the first Mozart Society founded in a country belonging to the former communist block.

The main purpose of SRM is "to promote Mozart's oeuvre and memory in Romania" (§ 3 of the statute). Its most important and challenging objective is to organize yearly the Mozart Festival held in Cluj, together with Gheorghe Dima Music Academy, Transilvania State Philharmonic, and other partners.

Since 2001, the founder President of Romanian Mozart Society, the musicologist and Prof. Dr. László Ferenc has been its Honorary President.

There have been fourteen Cluj Mozart Festivals to date, some editions having a particular theme:

1991 – “December 5th 1790 - December 5th 1791 - the last year"
1992 – “Mozart in E flat major - Mozart in C minor"
1993 – “Mozart in Paris - Mozart in Prague"
1994 – “Apocryphs and Offerings"
1995 – (this edition had no title, the program being suggested by the performing artists)
1996 – “Mozart, Son of Salzburg"
1997 – “Salieri and Mozart"
1998 – “Three generations: Leopold, Wolfgang Amade and Franz Xaver Mozart".
1999 – “Antiparallel Fates: W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)-J. M. Kraus (1756-1792)"
2000 – “W. A. Mozart”
2001 – “W. A. Mozart”
2002 – “W. A. Mozart”
2003 – “Mozart and Süßmayr”
2004 – No title

The Festival’s structure usually consists of a symphonic concert, a vocal-symphonic concert and two or three chamber music concerts. Beyond these, it may also include a special concert entitled "Mozart Juvenorum", an art exhibition, a musicology symposium, etc. Each edition of the Festival hosted contests for young interpreters of Mozart's music, as it follows:

1992, 1997, 2002 – piano
1993, 1998, 2003 – violin-piano duos
1994, 1999, 2004 – violin-cello-piano trios
1995, 2000 – lied
1996, 2001 – string quartets
2005 – singing

SRM’s (ca. 170 members) only financial resources are the membership fees and the donations.
In 2003, the membership fee is 150.000 Lei (less than 5 USD), in a country where a university professor earns less than 200 USD per month, and budding young musicians may earn about 60 USD per month. The names of the donors are published on every poster and festival program.
Until now, SRM has been supported either financially or with free of charge services by individuals, organizations and companies from Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States. For reasons easy to be guessed, the support from the young Romanian private capital was rather modest.
SRM makes efforts to pay Romanian musicians higher fees than the ones usually offered by Romanian state institutions. On the other hand, artists from abroad have generously accepted to perform at the Festival for fees that seem modest compared to their usual ones.

The SRM has twelve honorary members:
- the German publisher Karl Vötterle (1903-1975, post mortem),
- the Cluj native violinist and conductor Sándor Végh (1912-1997),
- the singer and director Ionel Pantea, presently living in Luxembourg, who organized in 1983 a Mozart Festival in Cluj,
- the American pianist and musicologist Robert D. Levin,
- His Excellency Dr. Christoph Parisini, who, during his term as ambassador of Austria in Romania has substantially supported SRM,
- Alexis Hauser, Austrian conductor,
- Dr. Friedrich Gehmacher, president of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg,
- Peter E. Sandor, president of the Mozart Society Toronto
- Jaap Schröder, Dutch violinist and conductor
- His Excellency Christian Zeileissen, ambassador of Austria in Romania.
- Dr. James J. Busuttil, Den Haag
- the Austrian businessman Peter Atzl

The bank account of the SRM is:

Banca Transilvania Cluj
Lei : RO78 BTRL 0130 1205 9599 83XX
Euro : RO27 BTRL 0130 4205 9599 83XX
USD : RO61 BTRL 0130 2205 9599 83XX

Adriana Bera
President