Romanian Rhapsody in A major, Op.11, No.1

There are some pieces, like Beethoven’s Septet and Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C sharp minor, which achieve such excessive popularity that their composers become positively embarrassed by them. Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody in A major is another of that kind. Enescu had scored an early success in Paris with his Romanian Poem, Op.1, in 1898 and he was still only twenty when he excited similar enthusiasm with the first of his two Romanian Rhapsodies, Op.11. Fifty years later - after an uncommonly distinguished career as a violinist, a composer and a Romanian national hero - he regretted that the continuing popularity of that early sensation obscured his later and more considerable achievement in such works as his five symphonies and his large-scale opera Oedipe.

Inspired by the folk music of the country he had left at the age of eight, to study first in Vienna and then in Paris, Enescu’s Op.11 scores are the Romanian equivalent of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. Unlike his more scientifically minded contemporary Bela Bartók, he was not very interested in the source of his material: Romanian, Slav, Hungarian, Gypsy, Arab… it didn’t matter as long as it was melodically or rhythmically entertaining. He was not indiscriminate, however, in the expressive nature of the material he chose for the two Rhapsodies, which are quite different in character, or in the way he linked his tunes into a continuity. From its teasing beginning with a potentially lively hora to its culmination with a ciorcilia (a virtuoso country fiddler’s imitation of lark song), the Rhapsody in A major is irresistibly abundant in dance tunes, brilliantly varied in orchestral colour and magically evocative in atmosphere. What a pity that the young composer sold the rights to this and the other Rhapsody, which would have brought him a lifetime’s income in royalties.