Interview by David Cohen

Special thanks to Valentin Radu for translating.

David Cohen: You are a very distinguished artist in Romania, but here in the United States, there is very little information about you. I understand you were a child prodigy. At what age did you discover the piano?

Dan Grigore: I was three and a half.

Cohen: How did you discover it?

Grigore: We had an old upright piano in the house. I started by reaching up and playing the keys. Then I heard waltzes and romantic songs on the radio, and I would reproduce them on the piano. After that, I began making up my own compositions.

Cohen: Your parents recognized this?

Grigore: My mother was a very gifted amateur violinist, and my grandfather was a very gifted painter and musician. He found my first teacher. After that, I started studying harmony.

Cohen: Was it hard to study under a communist regime?

Grigore: There was a teacher named Mihail Jora who recognized my talent and helped me get permission to receive special schooling instead of attending school every day. Because of that, I was somewhat spared the hardships of the communist regime. Twice a year, I had to take exams to show that I was learning the regular subjects, including physical education. For my physical education test, I had to jump over a hose. [Laughter.]

Then Jora’s wife was arrested and jailed for a year because her sister’s husband spoke on Radio Free Europe. There were no trials. Two guys in leather coats would just show up, and many times, you didn’t know what was happening.

When my grandfather was 80 years old, he wrote a letter about the conditions in Romania at the time and threw it over the fence of the American Embassy in Bucharest. The KGB people saw this, and he was arrested and put in a hard labor camp for seven years.

His family tried to get him out, saying he hadn’t meant to do it and that he was irresponsible and crazy. He said, “No, I’m not! I am responsible, and I know what I am doing!”

Cohen: How old were you when that happened?

Grigore: Fourteen or fifteen.

Cohen: Did it affect your musical career?

Grigore: My family and I were under suspicion after that. You have to understand how paranoid these people were. Remember, I said my teacher’s wife was arrested too.

After my grandfather got out of the camp, there was a regime change, and another leader named Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power. He was the one everyone knows, but we had bad leaders before him as well. When he came to power, he promoted a nationalistic attitude of freedom.

In 1968, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, Romania was the only communist country that didn’t send troops. Ceaușescu received a lot of international recognition for that, even in the West. My grandfather wrote a letter to Ceaușescu praising him for his nationalist attitude and for standing up to the Soviet Union. Ceaușescu received the letter and asked his assistants about this man.

He was told that my grandfather was an old man who had spent time in jail, was very poor, and no longer had a pension. Ceaușescu ordered his pension restored, including payments for the time he had spent in prison.

I speak a lot about my grandfather because he was my hero. He is where I got my moral core. He is my inspiration, and thanks to him, I found the strength to endure what life was like at that time.

Cohen: When did you make your concert debut?

Grigore: My concert debut was on October 16, 1957, with three pieces by Enescu.

Cohen: You also taught at the University of Bucharest?

Grigore: I was head of the piano department at the University of Bucharest from 1967 to 1969 and then again, after the revolution, from 1991 to 2002. I left the position five years ago because I wanted certain educational and administrative reforms. I had no help or support.

Cohen: What would the government do to control your career?

Grigore: For many years, I was not allowed to leave Romania to perform. I was not even allowed to visit other communist countries. They would invite me, but without my knowledge, the state agency that organized concerts for every Romanian artist would write to the promoters, saying that I had broken my arm or my leg or was otherwise ill. I didn’t even know about this until after the fall of Ceaușescu.

They would mix up which hand they said I had broken. Sometimes they would say it was my right hand, and sometimes they would say it was my left.

At one point, I was allowed to go on a tour of Western Europe. The only reason I was able to do that was that the official government pianist became ill, and the organizers in the other countries said they would not allow the program to be changed. They wanted somebody who could play that repertoire. A lot of money had been invested in that tour for the Bucharest Symphony Orchestra. It was right after the big earthquake in Romania in 1977.

There was a woman from the state agency who told the promoters not to cancel the tour. She said, “You have to take my word for it. I have a man who can play these pieces.” Then the press coverage came out, and the front pages of the Soviet newspapers proclaimed, “Joy and Jubilation for the Replacement.”

The year 1986 was a very bleak year for the revolution in Romania. The Palace of Congress in Bucharest, where Ceaușescu held the party congresses, was a huge hall that seated about 5,500 people. I had to play a big concert there with the Bucharest Philharmonic. We played Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and at the end, I played two encores. The first was a little Beethoven minuet, and the second was a ragtime piece by Scott Joplin.

Everybody stood up and started to clap and cheer because it was clear that it was a message, not just a piece of music. The next day, Ceaușescu forbade any further musical activity in that palace because he was so paranoid.

The American Embassy also arranged for me to be invited to America for a month, with all expenses paid, as part of a cultural exchange program. Of course, Ceaușescu did not allow that to happen. I used to play these encores at other concerts too.

I wanted to show the Ceaușescu regime how out of touch with the times it was.

Cohen: Was it dangerous for you?

Grigore: Somehow, they never put me in the gulag, but I was prohibited from playing anywhere. I constantly received threats. They threatened to fire me from all my jobs, and I dared them. I said, “Fine, please do. I will wear a sign on my chest that says, ‘Romanian Pianist Hungry, Needs Job,’ and I will walk in front of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.”

Cohen: Are you married?

Grigore: I have a wife and a son.

Cohen: What was your wife’s reaction to this?

Grigore: She told me that if I ever had an opportunity to defect to the West to be a free artist, I should do it. She said she would be fine in Romania and that we would find another way to reunite at some point. I knew my family would never be fine if I defected, so I never did.

Cohen: Did you worry about students like Valentin Radu, who played jazz?

Grigore: I didn’t know he was doing that, just as he didn’t know what I was doing in my concerts. It was like “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Cohen: Were your students in danger because they were your students?

Grigore: Yes, they were under scrutiny because of the connection.

Cohen: Did anything happen to any of your students?

Grigore: I don’t know about many of them, but one of my best students won a scholarship to study in Boston, and the Ceaușescu regime wouldn’t allow him to go. As a result, he was in Bucharest at the time of the earthquake in 1977 and died very tragically.

Cohen: Before Valentin came to the United States in 1978, was he able to tell you he was leaving?

Grigore: You wouldn’t announce to anyone that you were leaving until you had already arrived at your destination, out of fear that something might happen to you on the way to the airport.

Cohen: How did you stay in touch with Valentin after he came here?

Grigore: We lost touch for many years. Valentin didn’t return to Romania for a long time. When he did, he would visit me at the university and bring me American cigarettes. I smoked then. After that, he stopped returning to Romania for many years.

We lost touch for almost eight years, from 1985 to 1993. The first time I played in the United States was in 1993, in Plainfield, New Jersey. The Romanian ambassador in Washington, D.C., drove up to see my performance. He told me that he had made a sacrifice to see me because Valentin Radu was performing in Philadelphia that same night. He didn’t know we were teacher and student, and I didn’t know they were friends. He said, “You can hear Valentin in Philadelphia anytime.”

I said, “Valentin is in Philadelphia? You must give him my best.” That was how we rekindled our relationship.

Cohen: The concert this weekend is a celebration of your fifty years on stage. Congratulations!

Grigore: Thank you! There are celebrations in Romania and Philadelphia.

[Valentin Radu, who has been translating, adds:]

Valentin Radu: This is a jubilee concert celebrating fifty years and a very significant event. I am very proud that we are doing this to celebrate Maestro Grigore and that he has joined us. Last year, we marked ten years of collaboration between the Ama Deus Ensemble and Dan Grigore. I am very humbled that he is doing this.

It will be the first time we perform the Grieg Piano Concerto. This will be Maestro’s first concert following the fiftieth anniversary of his debut in Bucharest on October 16, 1957.

The Anniversary Gala with Dan Grigore took place on Friday, November 2, 2007, at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.