Enescu Octet

 Day 112

Enescu Octet

Casals described Enescu as the 'greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart'. Menuhin, who recorded the Bach Double Violin concerto with Enescu, described him as 'the most extraordinary human being, the greatest musician and the most formative influence he had ever experienced'. Quite a tribute.

The only music of his that I can ever recall hearing is the first of his two Romanian rhapsodies, which is a great orchestral showpiece though I don't know how typical of his work its. His masterpiece is generally reckoned to be the opera Œdipe, which is a piece that is on my list to hear one day.

This string octet is an early work, dating from 1900 when the composer was 19. It is a far heavier, more symphonic, work than the Glière I listened to yesterday. It lasts about 40 mins without a break and must put huge demands on the players: indeed the first performance and several of the available recordings were done with a conductor. Enescu recognised this and approved performances with a full string orchestra.

The opening is very compelling - a wide ranging theme in unison by seven of the players against a throbbing pedal note in the 2nd cello. That material returns in various guises throughout the piece. I don't anything else in score quite comes up to the impact of that opening but there was nevertheless much to admire, and enjoy, here. The young composer clearly wanted to try out as many different possibilities as possible with this large group and the textures are endlessly fascinating, though as we saw yesterday in the Glière sometimes the need to keep all of the instruments busy does lead to some very thick textures at times.

It is quite difficult to describe the style. Certainly some of it is in what you might call an overheated late romantic style and at times the language was not a million miles away from Verklärte Nacht, which was written at more or less the same time. But there are also echos of Richard Strauss and César Franck. No doubt Enescu was tying to work out his own idiom within the prevailing musical climate of the time.

This is an impressive piece and a quite remarkable achievement for a 19 year old. I'm not really sure why Enescu didn't go on to become one of the major composer of the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps he was but we haven't yet realised it.