George Enescu or Georges Enesco - which is right?

According to his birth certificate, the authentic Romanian form of his name is Gheorghe Enescu. But even in Romania he was known as George rather than Gheorghe and when he settled in Paris, where he had a home for most of life, he changed his first name to Georges and, to help the French pronounce it properly, he adapted his family name to Enesco. His tombstone at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris bears the name ENESCO but if he had been buried anywhere else it would have been ENESCU.

It is strange to think of Romania’s national composer living and dying and finding his last resting place in Paris.

Certainly, Enescu was the greatest composer Romania has ever produced and there is absolutely no doubt of his love for that country, where he stayed during both World Wars, and its music. But, in spite of all the echoes of Romanian folk song and dance in his orchestral scores - from the early Poème Romain and the Romanian Rhapsodies to the Suite villageoise and the late Overture on Romanian Folk Tunes - he was not a Romanian composer in the same way that Bartok was a Hungarian composer.

What’s the difference?

Enescu was more cosmopolitan. He left Romania at the age of seven to study violin in Vienna, where he got to know Brahms, and seven years later he moved on to Paris, to study composition at the Conservertoire. He didn’t like the Conservatoire - “In spirit I left it the day I entered it,” he once said - but he liked Paris and he liked French music. So he absorbed the best of both traditions: Brahms Wagner and Richard Strauss; Fauré, Debussy and Ravel.

With his Romanian background as well, it must have been very confusing.

It is true that he did have a problem in assimilating all those influences, some of which tend to show through even in his more mature music. He found a true, personal synthesis in his still neglected but uncommonly inspired opera Oedipe and, while Strauss is still there perhaps, he was well on his way to it in his Third Symphony.

It’s surprising that as a violinist and teacher - of Yehudi Menuhin among others - he had so much time for composing.

He was not only one of the greatest violinists of his generation but also a highly accomplished pianist and an admired conductor. So he was in constant demand as a performer. When he should have been able to give up touring he lost his savings - on leaving Romania in the changing political situation at the end of the War - and had to go on playing, in spite of seriously failing health, just to keep up his third-floor apartment in the rue de Clichy. In the end he lost even that and had to move into the basement. It was a sad end for a man who had raised so much for Romanian charities over the preceding decades.

So how did he manage to write as much as he did?

He was a rare genius with the kind of brain that enabled him to do things in half the time it would take anyone else. Casals said he was “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.” His memory, moreover, is legendary: asked if it was true that, if all Beethoven’s works were lost, he could reconstruct them, he replied, “Oh no, only the symphonies, quartets and trios, the Missa Solemnis and Fidelio.”

But that didn’t make him as great composer as some of his less gifted contemporaries.

Perhaps not, but there is still a lot of his music that never gets performed. It is still too early to make a final judgement and, anyway, whatever Enescu we hear there is always his high-quality technique, his vision and his generosity of spirit behind it.

Gerald Larner©

further reading:

Noel Malcolm: George Enescu, his life and music (Toccata Press 1990)

further listening

Symphony No.3; Romanian Rhapsody, Op.11, No.1 - BBC Philharmonic, Leeds Festival Chorus/Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (Chandos CHAN 9633)

Symphonies 1 & 2 - Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo/Lawrence Foster (EMI CDC 7 54763 2)

Lawrence Foster, who conducted the CBSO in Enescu’s Second Symphony in 1993, has also recorded Oedipe for EMI and several of Enescu’s orchestra and chamber works for Erato

According to his birth certificate, the authentic Romanian form of his name is Gheorghe Enescu. But even in Romania he was known as George rather than Gheorghe and when he settled in Paris, where he had a home for most of life, he changed his first name to Georges and, to help the French pronounce it properly, he adapted his family name to Enesco. His tombstone at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris bears the name ENESCO but if he had been buried anywhere else it would have been ENESCU.

It is strange to think of Romania’s national composer living and dying and finding his last resting place in Paris.

Certainly, Enescu was the greatest composer Romania has ever produced and there is absolutely no doubt of his love for that country, where he stayed during both World Wars, and its music. But, in spite of all the echoes of Romanian folk song and dance in his orchestral scores - from the early Poème Romain and the Romanian Rhapsodies to the Suite villageoise and the late Overture on Romanian Folk Tunes - he was not a Romanian composer in the same way that Bartok was a Hungarian composer.

Before we go on to that, can we hear a little of the Romanian composer he was?

(GL introduces the first two estracts)

CD 1 Romanian Rhapsody No.1, Erato disc, track 1 - approx 1’ 17”

CD 2 Romanian Rhapsody No.2, Erato disc, track 2 - approx 1’ 10”

So what is the difference between Enescu and Bartok, why didn’t Enescu achieve the reputation and influence as a composer that Bartok did?

Enescu was more cosmopolitan. He left Romania at the age of seven to study violin in Vienna, where he got to know Brahms, and seven years later he moved on to Paris, to study composition at the Conservertoire. He didn’t like the Conservatoire - “In spirit I left it the day I entered it,” he once said - but he liked Paris and he liked French music. So he absorbed the best of both traditions: Brahms Wagner and Richard Strauss; Fauré, Debussy and Ravel.

With his Romanian background as well, it must have been very confusing.

It is true that he did have a problem in assimilating all those influences, some of which tend to show through even in his more mature music. He found a true, personal synthesis in his still neglected but uncommonly inspired opera Oedipe and, while Strauss is still there perhaps, he was well on his way to it in his Third Symphony.

CD 3 Symphony No.2 in A major, EMI disc, track 4 - approx 1’

It’s surprising that as a violinist and teacher - of Yehudi Menuhin among others - he had so much time for composing.

He was not only one of the greatest violinists of his generation but also a highly accomplished pianist and an admired conductor. So he was in constant demand as a performer. When he should have been able to give up touring he lost his savings - on leaving Romania in the changing political situation at the end of the War - and had to go on playing, in spite of seriously failing health, just to keep up his third-floor apartment in the rue de Clichy. In the end he lost even that and had to move into the basement. It was a sad end for a man who had raised so much for Romanian charities over the preceding decades.

So how did he manage to write as much as he did?

He was a rare genius with the kind of brain that enabled him to do things in half the time it would take anyone else. Casals said he was “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.” His memory, moreover, is legendary: asked if it was true that, if all Beethoven’s works were lost, he could reconstruct them, he replied, “Oh no, only the symphonies, quartets and trios, the Missa Solemnis and Fidelio.”

But that didn’t make him as great composer as some of his less gifted contemporaries.

Perhaps not, but there is still a lot of his music that never gets performed. It is still too early to make a final judgement and, anyway, whatever Enescu we hear there is always his high-quality technique, his vision and his generosity of spirit behind it.