George Georgescu - World War II and Its Aftermath

World War II and Its Aftermath

Romania's entry into World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany did little to slow Georgescu's activities at home or abroad. Georgescu took the Bucharest Philharmonic on a tour of Nazi-occupied countries to considerable critical acclaim. In 1942, he and the orchestra were recorded for the first time on the new medium of magnetic tape; the works performed were Enescu's First Symphony and two Romanian Rhapsodies. A year later, Georgescu presided over the concert debut of the Romanian pianist and composer Valentin Gheorghiu, then 15 years old.

Georgescu's fortunes, a largely unbroken string of successes for the preceding quarter century, would take a dramatically unfavorable turn in 1944, when Romania abruptly switched sides, joining the Allies. On the strength of his participation in the Nazi cultural and propaganda machine, the authorities branded Georgescu a collaborator and barred him "for life" from conducting in Romania. Succeeding him at the Bucharest Philharmonic, after two brief caretaker regimes, was Constantin Silvestri, whose conducting talents Georgescu himself had discovered a few years earlier. Moreover, the government confiscated property from Tutu's family and in the fall of 1944 arrested Constantin Busila, her adoptive father, who would die in prison five years later.