Enescu
Symphonies Nos 1-3
Orchestre National de France/Cristian Maˇcelaru
Deutsche Grammophon 486 5505 160:21 mins (3CD)
This first recording of George Enescu’s music on DG is something to celebrate. It’s indeed a long time since a major label has paid comprehensive attention to Enescu’s large-scale works – we have to go back to Lawrence Foster’s series for EMI – even though there have always been such testimonies as that of Pablo Casals, who held Enescu to be ‘the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart’. A towering violinist, pianist, conductor and teacher, Enescu spent much of his life in Paris, dying there in exile in 1955; now that the Orchestre National de France is under the music directorship of the dynamic Romanian conductor Cristian Maˇcelaru, it’s a good moment for the French to be reconnecting with him.
Though premiered in Bucharest, Enescu’s two early Romanian Rhapsodies were composed in Paris. They are deservedly popular, with No. 1 particularly steeped in Romanian dance rhythms that sound freshly inspired here. Predominantly slow and gentle, No. 2 is full of folk inflections – an exoticism and modality marvellously showcased in the orchestral playing and DG’s vivid recorded sound.
Other parts of Enescu’s output remain underappreciated, not least the three completed symphonies, which give a good overview of his development as a composer, moving from the early influences of German Romanticism to his later affinity with such voices as Scriabin and Szymanowski.
It’s quite a journey, as the languorous finale of the Third Symphony demonstrates
