Fast Enough? Toni Iordache, Cimbalom Virtuoso

At the age of four Toni Iordache got to know the smaller portable version of the tzambal (cimbalom). Iordache’s friend, the trumpeter Costel Vasilescu, remembers their first meeting well: “I met Toni in 1954 in a village on the outskirts of Bucharest. Toni was playing there and everyone was just standing around him and getting scared, because his playing was so insanely good.”
Iordache was so gifted a musician he soon was sent on tour through many European countries, the USA and Asia as a representative of Socialist Romania. Returning home he often drove from Bucharest Airport straight to a wedding where his band were waiting for him. At the beginning of the 1970s he was arrested for the illegal possession of foreign currency. Apparently he wanted to buy his wife a fur coat with the money he had earned abroad. Even the prestigious orchestra leader Florian Economu couldn’t help his soloist at the trial when he spoke up for him: “We have three giants in Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu (head of state), Ilie Nastase (Romanian tennis champion) and the tzambal player Toni Iordache! Do you really want to convict him for a few dollars?”.

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