Enescu New
Octet in C, Op. 7 (arr. Desyatnikov)a. Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 29b.
bDzeraldas Bidva (violin); bUla Ulijona (viola); bMarta Sudraba (cello); bAndrius Zlabys (piano); aKremerata Baltica/Gidon Kremer (violin).
Nonesuch 7559-79682-2 (full price, 1 hour 13 minutes). Producers Helmut Mühle, Gidon Kremer. Engineers Philipp Nedel, Niels Müller. Date aJune 2000, bNovember 2001.
To my mind, George Enescu is the greatest composer whose greatness is not a generally recognized facet of musical history. Recordings such as this one strike a powerful blow for the cause: with advocacy as committed as here, even a sceptic would have to admit that he was in the presence of an extraordinary creative personality. These two works date from both ends of Enescu's ill-starred career: the Octet for strings (1900) and the Piano Quintet (1940) show the radical evolution of his style.
The Octet, scored in its original version for double string quartet, is an astonishing masterpiece: a work of breathtaking confidence for a composer only 19 years old. The opening — for unisoni strings, except for a second cello providing a rhythmic counterpoint — sweeps the listener away with a vastly extended melody of such élan that it doesn't stop for breath for the first four minutes; even after that first comma, it continues to bowl ever onwards with wide-arched energy. Enescu's intent was to compose a piece in which the four movements, though independent, would come together as a single massive conception: 'the whole piece would [thus] form a single movement in sonata form, on a huge scale'. He succeeded magnificently, the profusion of its (often modal) melodic richness enrobing an underlying sense of structural purpose, aided by the subtle threading of the opening theme through all four movements.
Enescu recognized that the vastness of the music invited performance by larger forces and he sanctioned the employment of a full string orchestra 'on condition that certain singing parts be entrusted to soloists'. That's what Gidon Kremer has done here, using an adaptation by Leonid Desyatnikov. It works thrillingly well, realizing the sense of scale implied in the original and adding a concerto grosso element as individual solo lines flower from the fuller weft.
The expansive (40-minute) Piano Quintet is another masterpiece, but one cut from a very different cloth. Where the Octet is all ambitious swagger, the Fauréan Quintet is elusive, shy in stating its material, the tonality fugitive, the string-writing in the first of its two movements often engaged in some private conversation over the elliptical piano part, the themes half-glimpsed, like refracted memories of folk song. Activity stirs in the opening bars of the second movement, hints of a folk dance emerge, and a degree of forward momentum develops, though it is often interrupted. Unlike the Octet, which bundles you along in its enthusiasm, the Quintet is not an easy nut to crack. But at no point is it anything less than strikingly beautiful, and once you find its pulse, it is deeply moving.
The performances are exemplary — they're passionate, detailed, compellingly exciting: exactly the kind of advocacy such neglected masterworks demand. The recorded sound is transparent and full-bodied. Elisabeth Konovaltova provides perceptive programme notes that avoid detailed elucidation of the musical processes at work, but her generalities are usually spot on, as when she writes of the 'thumping vitality' of the finale of the Octet; the presentation is attractive, too. There's no real competition for this disc: this is the first recording of the string-orchestral version of the Octet, and it has been many years since the Quintet saw the inside of a studio.
This is, in short, one of the finest discs to come my way in a long time. I urge you to make its acquaintance with unseemly haste.
used by permission
