No bicycle journey this time – unlike Duende in 2020, or Roots two years later. Instead, a third cardinal point guides this new discographic voyage: the North. First, the nearby Fribourg of Olivier Lattion – also Gheorghiu’s home since 2018. Then, Romantic Germany – embodied by Robert Schumann. Finally, the “true” North – of fjords and northern lights – through Edvard Grieg. At the close of the 19th century, Grieg – as a Norwegian – was seeking his own voice among the nations of Europe, and did not hesitate to sharpen it by drawing on the musical wells of the Old Continent (studying in Leipzig under Carl Reinecke and Ignaz Moscheles). A shifting thread, then – but one that, beyond geography, tells stories: of Teo Gheorghiu’s intimate bond with each of the three works on this album – stories of life, friendship, and (inevitably!) nature.

Fribourg is the alpha and the omega of this adven­ture. It was in the city of the Zähringen dynasty that Teo Gheorghiu first encountered Olivier Lattion’s music – through his daughter Gioia, who attended the same school as the composer’s son : a childhood connection, how symbolic ! – but it was in Fribourg’s Equilibre Hall on 30 January 2025 that the founda­tion of this album was laid : Grieg’s A minor Piano Concerto, marking his long-awaited meeting with Gábor Takács-Nagy – a conductor he has long admired, both through recordings of the famed Takács Quartet and through the maestro’s masterclasses in Verbier – and whose “youthful spirit” and “ability to touch everyone through the passionate, intense radiance of his baton” Gheorghiu cherishes. “A live recording is always a challenge,” he confides. “You can’t predict whether it will work. It might have failed – and we’d have found another launchpad for the album. But the stars aligned perfectly. I even feel the Fribourg Cham­ber Orchestra – which I’ve come to know better since taking over as head of the Fribourg Concert Society in 2023 – has never played so well! Especially welcome for a work as frequently recorded as Grieg’s Concerto: I believe we’ve succeeded in giving it a freshness and spontaneity that’s rather rare.”