Violin, guitar and the 1702 “Elder-Voicu” Stradivarius. Since 2022 the two have taken programmes built on Ilie’s arrangements to cathedrals, castles, village courtyards and festival stages across Romania, and on to Rome and Madrid.
For nineteen summers the Stradivarius Tour has taken Alexandru Tomescu and the “Elder-Voicu” violin, a Romanian national treasure, through the cities and villages of Romania. Dragoș Ilie has been his partner on three of those tours.
Violin
Alexandru TomescuAntonio Stradivari, “Elder-Voicu”, 1702
Guitar
Dragoș Ilie
Tours
Paganini Magic, 2022Rapsodiile, 2025. Muzele, with Omar Massa, 2026
Recording
Paganini MagicCD, recorded 2025
Festivals
Sibiu International Theatre FestivalGeorge Enescu Festival; Vară Magică at the Romanian Athenaeum
Abroad
Rome, 2025Madrid, 2026
Teaching
Enescu ExperienceSummer masterclass, Cabana Caraiman, since 2023
The partnership began with Paganini, who played the guitar as well as the violin and wrote a great deal of music for the two together. Tomescu built the 2022 tour on six of his sonatas, with Ilie, then still a doctoral student in Texas, at the guitar. The programme went down so well that they recorded it in 2025.
Their later programmes rest on his arrangements: Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsodies, Porumbescu’s Balada, Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances and Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole.
In many ways, my permanent return home to Romania is tied to that meeting.
Dragoș Ilie, 2025. Translated from Romanian
The tours
Three summers on the road
202226 June – 16 July17 concerts, 13 cities
Paganini Magic
The fifteenth Stradivarius Tour, and the first with Ilie. It opened in Oradea and played churches, memorial houses and bookshops: the Black Church in Brașov, the Evangelical Church in Sebeș, the Iuliu Maniu Memorial House at Bădăcin and the Cărturești Carusel bookshop in Bucharest. Money raised went to young refugee artists from Ukraine.
Programme75 minutes
PaganiniCentone di Sonate, MS 1126 sonatas
For violin and guitar
Paganini himself considered the guitar his queen, and not the violin!
The eighteenth tour marked seventy years since George Enescu’s death. At Tomescu’s request Ilie arranged Enescu’s two Romanian Rhapsodies, written for full symphony orchestra, for violin and guitar. He spent months on them. Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue completed the programme. Enescu and Gershwin were contemporaries, and for Ilie the pairing stood for his two homes: Romania, and the United States, where he spent nearly a decade.
The tour opened in Oradea on 10 June and gave the opening concert of the Sibiu International Theatre Festival on 20 June. It stopped at Brâncuși’s birthplace in Hobița and beside the Endless Column in Târgu Jiu, drew a large audience to Sala Radio in Bucharest on 1 July, and closed at the Bethlen-Haller Castle in Cetatea de Baltă on 12 July.
ProgrammeSala Radio, 1 July 2025
GershwinThree Preludes
Arranged by Andrew Zohn
GershwinRhapsody in Blue
Arranged by Kupinski and Huillet, edited by Ilie
EnescuRomanian Rhapsody No. 2, Op. 11
Arranged by Ilie
EnescuRomanian Rhapsody No. 1, Op. 11
Arranged by Ilie
EncoresPorumbescu, Balada; Bartók, Romanian Folk Dances
Balada transcribed by Ilie
I was told it was impossible.
Dragoș Ilie, on arranging the Rhapsodies, 2025. Translated from Romanian
Hobița, Brâncuși’s birthplace, 2025Oradea, June 2025
The nineteenth tour celebrated 150 years since the birth of Constantin Brâncuși, who kept violins and a guitar in his Paris studio and built his own gramophone. The programme drew on music he loved, and the Argentine bandoneonist Omar Massa joined them to make a trio. The tour ran under the High Patronage of the President of Romania, and its organisers named Tomescu and Ilie ambassadors of the Brâncuși Year.
It played the Timișoara Opera, the Greek-Catholic Cathedral of St Nicholas in Oradea, the basilica at Șumuleu Ciuc, the Palace of Culture in Iași, Siret, the Bethlen-Haller Castle on 4 July, and Hobița once again.
Programme
Violin and guitar
Satie, Gymnopédie No. 3; Falla, Suite populaire espagnole; Bartók, Romanian Folk Dances
Violin and bandoneon
Bach, Air; Enescu, Balada; Mozart, Rondo in D major
Enescu, Porumbescu, Bartók and Falla in Ilie’s arrangements, presented by the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Embassy of Romania in Spain. Full concert
MadridReal Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
Sat 6 Dec2025
Charity concert
The Rhapsodies programme, for Casa Sfânta Anastasia, which houses the families of Romanian children treated in Rome’s hospitals.
RomeBasilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
Wed 17 Sep2025
Rhapsodies, first night of the Enescu Festival Square
The free open-air stage of the George Enescu International Festival, seventy years after the composer’s death. Rhapsody No. 1 · Encores
BucharestGeorge Enescu Square
Wed 6 Aug2025
Paganini Magic, Vară Magică festival
The Paganini programme in the summer festival of the Romanian Athenaeum, the year it was recorded.
BucharestRomanian Athenaeum
Fri 20 Jun2025
Opening concert, Sibiu International Theatre Festival
The Rhapsodies programme, on the festival’s first day.
SibiuLutheran Cathedral of St Mary
Fri 4 Oct2024
Muzică clasică pentru toți
An evening concert presented with Radio România Muzical.
BucharestParkLake, Main Square
The record
Paganini Magic
Alexandru Tomescu Dragoș IliePaganini Magic
CD · 2025
Their first programme, set down on disc: sonatas from Paganini’s Centone di Sonate for violin and guitar, played on the “Elder-Voicu” Stradivarius. The duo recorded it in the spring of 2025, three years after they first toured it.
The CD was presented on the 2025 tour at Cărturești bookshops in Sibiu, Iași and Bucharest, and the two played the programme at the Romanian Athenaeum that August.
It was an extraordinary success, so we decided to put it on a CD.
Alexandru Tomescu, Radio România Muzical, 2025. Translated from Romanian
Each summer since 2023 Tomescu and Ilie have taught a masterclass for young violinists and guitarists at Cabana Caraiman, high in the Bucegi Mountains. Places are limited and students are chosen by selection.
The course reaches past the instrument. In 2025 it brought in a psychologist to talk with students about stage fright, a yoga teacher for the back pain and stiffness that many string players live with, and a marketing specialist on how young musicians present themselves.
Timișoara, 2025George Enescu Festival Square, 2025. Film stillHobița, 2025Madrid, 2026. Film stillStradivarius Tour, 2025
Tour photographs and posters: Turneul Internațional Stradivarius. Films: Casa Memorială Iuliu Maniu, Bădăcin (2022); LXFgtr (George Enescu Festival Square, 2025). Quotes from Romanian sources are translated.
