Enescu: Piano Music Volume 2 (Incls Piano Sonatas No.1 & 3)

Hybrid/SACD - playable on all compact disc players

BBC Music Magazine Award Winner 2007: Instrumental

'A superb set which places Enescu among the great piano composers'
(BBC Music Magazine Instrumental recording of the Month May 2006)

"Having recently fallen under the spell of Enescu's masterpiece, the opera Oedipe, it was a pleasant surprise to find this double CD in the latest batch of review discs. I was totally unfamiliar with his piano music, but this multi-talented man, who first and foremost was one of the great violinists of his day, was also a brilliant pianist, admired by pianist colleagues of the calibre of Alfred Cortot, who stated that Enescu had a better piano technique than Cortot himself. And it is obvious that some of this music puts the pianist to severe test. The music, spanning a period of almost forty years, is also extremely diversified.

The opening piece, the Prelude and Fugue, written when he was 22, has more than a nod in the direction of Johann Sebastian Bach, the prelude especially clarified and serene, but this is far from a pastiche and there soon creep in un-Bachian harmonies, reminding us that his teacher was Fauré and that the piano composer of the day was Debussy. The long Nocturne is even more impressionistic, starting softly almost immobile but slowly growing. It reaches no real climax at this stage but goes back to the initial mood, strangely hypnotic. After about seven minutes it changes character, becomes darker with menacing rumble in the left hand while the right hand sprinkles arabesques on the dark surface. Enescu's night music is no idyll; Chopin and Field are in a completely different world; this is rather nightmarish but with rays of light to both illuminate and console. Fascinating music that is a challenge to both pianist and instrument. After 14 minutes it dies away and there is a long silence before we return to the stillness of the opening. This music was never heard during Enescu's lifetime - it was found among his papers after his death.

The Scherzo, written he was 15, starts with youthful nervous eagerness. After about two minutes there is a contrasting trio with a beautiful Brahmsian melody and then back to puberty again. Pièce sur le nom de Fauré was a commission from the Revue musicale which turned to seven of the aged masters former pupils to write a short piece each - among the others were Koechlin, Ravel and Florent Schmitt. It has an improvisatory character but is in fact utterly calculated with the little tune, built on the letters of Fauré's name, repeated twelve times but skilfully hidden behind the decorations with which he fills his little canvas.

CD2 contains his first and third piano sonatas only. Where is the second? Well, it doesn't exist, but it once did - only in Enescu's head, though. It was a finished composition that he, as in many other cases, never found the time to write down. He once said to a colleague: "If I could put down on paper everything I have in my head, it would take hundreds of years". I wonder what riches we would have had if the modern computer with all its possibilities had existed in Enescu's time. Sonata No. 1 from 1924 was one of few works that had him temporarily abandoning the strenuous composition of the opera Oedipe. It is a bit strangely organised, has a long first movement, marked Allegro molto moderato e grave and it is serious and mostly dark. It begins with a simple descending motif that is soon immersed in a swarm of ideas, seemingly improvised. The second movement, instead of being slow is a Presto vivace, a short and whirling scherzo, actually a kind of perpetuum mobile. The slow movement instead comes last, starting on a repeated single note, very sparse music, reminding me of Arvo Pärt's piano compositions. The whole movement feels like consolation finally reached after the darkness of the beginning and the hectic gaiety of the scherzo.

Sonata No. 3, written ten years later, after having finished the opera, is light and full of invention, seemingly written by a harmonious and confident person. Nothing could be more wrong: in reality his private life was in a tumultuous state, his life partner Maruca having suffered a mental breakdown "which left her bordering on madness for the rest of her life". Enescu wrote in a letter to Edmond Fleg, the librettist of Oedipe: "I console myself by taking refuge in composition. The result is a new piano sonata, freshly arrived after Oedipe. It's full of gaiety, in complete contrast to the atmosphere which surrounds it". Little more needs to be said about it, only that the central movement, Andantino cantabile, breathes harmony, deeply influenced by Romanian folk-music. The last movement is bouncy and jolly, like someone dancing around on a brightly sunlit summer meadow.

One must wonder why this music isn't heard more often, but of course Enescu has never been a household name outside his native Romania and even great composers need first rate advocates to salvage them from obscurity; and this is exactly what Enescu has in the shape of Luiza Borac. The two discs, not too well-filled (but at a special,price), abound with ravishing pianism and although I have not been able to hear any alternative versions it is hard to imagine this music better played. Ms Borac has such delicate touch and also all the requisite power. She is recorded with exceptional truthfulness, the acoustics of St. Dunstan's Church being obviously ideal for this music. The booklet has a lot of interesting biographical details as well as good notes on the music. Altogether this is a high quality product. Maybe Enescu at last is due for wider appreciation and then this set will be a valuable gateway."
(MusicWeb March 2006)