Enescu’s best work, like Bartok’s, combines craftsmanship with a bold and often colourful exterior. Much of it sounds improvised. But, as pianist Dominic Saunders suggests (echoing Yehudi Menuhin), planning and editing were as crucial to Enescu’s methods as inspiration. The main exception in this particular context is the unfinished Caprice roumain, which was completed by composer Cornel Taranu. That we are able to hear the work at all is something of a minor miracle, but more of that later.
Olympia’s programme usefully couples the Third Violin Sonata with a rarely heard sonata movement, or ‘Torso’ Sonata, which anticipates its larger sibling, not merely in key (A minor) but in the distinctive complexion of its themes. The ‘Torso’ is a fairly big piece (14'25), with an identifiably Brahmsian slant (try from, say, 1'25) and a fairly clear-cut course of musical argument. The Sonata, which was composed in 1926 ‘dans le caractere populaire roumain’, ranks with those of Bartok, Prokofiev (No 1) and Bloch (No 2) as being among the greatest of the period. Colourful devices such as harmonics and glissandos (not to mention a use of quarter tones) combine with a garlicky top line, darker in profile than the Romanian Rhapsodies (which quote popular tunes that the gypsy fiddler Dinicu actually recorded) and wedded to some tersely structured piano writing.
Impressions d’enfance (1940) is a tasty sequence of vignettes that opens with a solo fiddle and ends with a musical sunrise. Gidon Kremer did the piece proud for Teldec (7/97) and if Anne Solomon doesn’t quite match him for picture-postcard characterisation, she still manages to approximate the appropriate style and accent. The Sonata performance is similarly well judged, though I did sometimes feel that Saunders’ piano playing was veering on the side of caution.
It’s unfortunate that Olympia’s programme should have appeared in the same month as the imported Electrecord release, which is in a different class entirely. I’ve known about this set for some while and have been itching to bring it to your attention. Listening to Sherban Lupu is like confronting a composite violinistic genius made up of Enescu himself (elegance, tonal allure, recreative flare), Dinicu (fire, seduction) and Isaac Stern (intellectual fibre, toughness of attack). Lupu’s timing is immaculate. Try the opening of Impressions d’enfance, or the many instances in the Third Sonata where Enescu leaps to his feet, kicks sadness aside and starts to dance. Lupu’s quietly sighing bow is like the breathy frame favoured by certain jazz saxophonists, and his mastery of gypsy-style devices is unique in my experience.
Pianist-composer Valentin Gheorghiu (there’s a name from the gramophone’s past) proves himself an ideal collaborator. His subtle negotiation of colour, dynamics and rhythm mirror Lupu’s controlled rhapsodising to perfection. I could, I suppose, cite various well-known shellac or LP predecessors for comparison, but what would be the point? None are actually superior to Lupu, and none are as well recorded.
The relatively early Second Sonata recalls Cesar Franck, picking up folk-like speed only towards the end of the piece, where it makes an unexpected move in the direction of its successor. Again, the performance is superb: ardent, well judged and imaginative. As to the uncompleted Caprice roumain, Enescu had been working on the work between 1925 and 1949. Extant sketches include a partially scored first movement and sundry guidelines for the rest, though Taranu – who has also completed other works by Enescu – needed to do a good deal of filling in. The resultant four-movement work has a darkly oriental feel to it, wayward at times and exotically scored (a piano mimics a cimbalon) and with the expected presence of Romanian dance-forms. Think of Bartok’s violin rhapsodies in their orchestral guise (the Second especially), and of Enescu’s own Third Violin Sonata, and you’ll get the picture.
Cristian Mandeal and his Bucharest players cope well with the lavish demands that Enescu and Taranu make on them, and Lupu’s handling of the solo part has all the temperament and colour that inform his performances of the chamber works. One hesitates to guess what Enescu himself might have made of it but I doubt that non-specialist listeners without prior knowledge would question its authenticity. Good sound and presentation