Ilarion Ionescu-Galați

I. Ionescu-Galaţi was born on 17^th September 1937 in Iassy, Romania. He started to study violin at the age of four, at the beginning with his father, who was an amateur musician.
In 1949 he started to attend the School of Music in Bucharest, where he studied the violin with Prof. George Manoliu. At the same time, he also attended the courses of chamber music, theory and solfeggio, harmony, counter-point, folklore and he graduated the school with the best mark, at all these specialties.
In 1954 he had his first important concert as a soloist, playing the Wieniawsky’s Violin concerto with the Bucharest Radio and Television Orchestra.
In 1955 he became a student of the Academy of Music in Bucharest. He started his career as a violinist playing with all Romanian orchestras and he also started his international career playing in Russia, China, Mongolia, France, Spain. During his studies he got the George Enescu scholarship. He was the winner of the “George Enescu National Competition” and of the “Young Musicians Competition” in 1961. He was the first soloist in Romania who performed the Violin concerto by Shostakovich.
After the graduation of the Music Academy, he went on with his career as a soloist and he also became a member of the Bucharest “George Enescu” Philharmonic.
Conducting was his passion since his childhood, studying it since age of 10 with famous Romanian conductors - Mircea Basarab and Emanuel Elenescu. In 1963 he conducted his first concert, starting his career as a conductor, at the same time with his career as a violinist.
In 1965 he went to Paris, where he won a scholarship of the French Government and where he studied with famous conductors like Charles Munch and Pierre Dervaux. In 1968 he got his diploma -First Prize- having the unanimity of the jury.
He returned to Romania and after he won a competition, he became the First Conductor of the Brasov Philharmonic Orchestra, where he still is the First Conductor. In 1970 he attended some courses for conducting with Leopold Stokowski in New York and Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia.
He appeared as conductor of the Festival of Miami and he also conducted following orchestras: American Symphony Orchestra, Queens Symphony Orchestra, New York Symphony Orchestra, “Swiss Romande” Basel Symphony Orchestra, Radio Basel Symphony Orchestra, Winterthur Orchestra (Switzerland), Petrograd Philharmonic, Havana Symphony Orchestra, Göteborg and Gavle, Uppsala Symphony Orchestra (Sweden), Athens and Thessaloniki (Greece), Ankara, Izmir, Istanbul (Turkey), Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonia (Japan), Manila, Singapore, Peking and Shanghai (China), Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Poland, Belgium etc.
As a teacher of conducting, he was invited several times to Michigan University, Kent University, Istanbul University.
He was the Artistic Director of the Symphony Orchestra in Istanbul and violin teacher at Anadolu University, in Turkey.
Among the soloists he played with, the following ones can be included: Ruggiero Ricci, Viktor Pikaizen, Igor Oistrakh, Rudolf Kehrer, Magda Tagliaferro, Colin Carr, Li Min Chan, Viktor Tretiakov, Daniel Safran, E. Zukermann, Lola Bobescu, Vladimir Orlov, Radu Lupu, Radu Aldulescu etc.
He made records with Philips, Radio Stockholm, Radio Madrid, Radio Istanbul, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and Electrecord Bucharest.
He is Honored Member of the Suzuki School of Music in Tokyo and Honored Citizen of Brasov, for the year 2000. He received the TV Prize for 1999, the First Prize “Magnum 2001” granted by the Union of the Musical Critics in Romania and the honorary diploma of the Ministry of Culture Romania. Also, in 2017 he received the Romanian Artists Union Award for lifetime achievement.