Symphony No.2 in A major, Op.17

George Enescu is best known in this country as the violin teacher of Yehudi Menuhin and as the composer of two delightful and highly colourful Romanian Rhapsodies. In Romania, where he was born (in a town now called George Enescu), and in France, where (as Georges Enesco) he spent much of his life, his status as a composer is more widely recognised: his operatic masterpiece Oedipe, for example, which was first performed in Paris in 1936, has found a regular place in the repertoire in Bucharest and it is due largely to the enterprise of French recording companies and to the advocacy of Lawrence Foster (himself of Romanian descent) that not only Oedipe but also much of the orchestral music has become available on disc. But even in his lifetime, and even in France and Romania, George Enescu was associated above all with his two Romanian Rhapsodies - a situation which he resented, not so much because he had unwisely signed away the rights to them as because, as time went on, they became less and less representative of the composer he really was. He was only 20 when he wrote them and not long out of the Paris Conservatoire.

Even so the Romanian Rhapsodies do represent a very important aspect of Enescu’s creative personality. For all his love of Brahms and Wagner, whose presence is very evident in his First Symphony, for all his admiration for Richard Strauss, for all the technical and aesthetic sophistication he had learned as a pupil of Gédalge, Massenet and Fauré, he remained firmly attached to his Romanian roots and to a folk-music culture uniquely derived from a variety of Hungarian, Slav, Gypsy, and Arabian sources. It was probably not until the Third Symphony of 1918 that he was able to reconcile these opposing forces.

Much of the Second Symphony, which was first performed under the composer’s direction in Bucharest in 1915, could be interpreted as a dramatic representation of the need to reconcile his tendency towards the German mainstream on the one hand with the opposite attraction of Romanian folksong on the other. It cannot have been his conscious intention to construct a symphony out of a study in self-analysis but, if it had been, he could hardly have signposted it more plainly. It is difficult to believe, for example that as brilliant a musician as Enescu - one of the greatest violinists of his time as well as an accomplished pianist and conductor - cannot have been aware of what he was doing when he opened a symphony in Vivace tempo with A major harmonies in rapidly articulated triplets on woodwind. The melody which enters in octaves on violins has nothing to do with the Allegro vivace first theme of the “Italian” Symphony - Mendelssohn’s has an upward flight whereas Enescu’s presses downwards - but the woodwind background is the same and the allusion to the German mainstream is obvious.

Enescu’s textures, which are characteristically rich in counterpoint, are more complex than Mendelssohn’s, of course, and his first subject is extraordinarily abundant in thematic ideas - although, in fact, they are all related (usually by a prominent triplet figure) to the opening theme. But then, as the dynamic pressure is relaxed and the tempo slows down almost to a pause, there is a complete change of atmosphere: against quietly sustained harmonies on harp and celesta and viola and cello harmonics, three flutes introduce a nostalgic melody of unmistakably Romanian identity with exotic ornaments decorating its sensuously curving chromatic line. Prudently, however, Enescu has already anticipated one of its phrases in the first subject. By means of this thematic relationship along with pervasive echoes of Strauss’s Salome (a similar blend of German mainstream and the exotic) and after a poetically extended development and a recapitulation which avoids the direct confrontation postulated in the exposition, the composer is finally able to effect a symbolic reconciliation between the two contrasting elements.

The beautifully scored slow movement, which is linked to the first by a whole network of thematic cross-references, presents the polarity in another way. It is as if Strauss’s Don Juan, who is introduced by a lovely clarinet solo vaguely reminiscent of an amorous episode in the German composer’s tone poem, has been transported to the Romanian countryside. The clarinet melody retains at least vestiges of its identity as it passes through a series of romantic episodes - encounters with eerie drum rolls and exotic woodwind outcries, an elaborately contrapuntal variation for woodwind and solo strings, passionate climaxes stimulated by voluptuous chromatic decorations in all parts of the orchestra, and an emotionally spontaneous rather than structurally literal recapitulation.

The first movement of the Second Symphony was completed in 1912 and the second movement probably not much later. By the time Enescu completed the work, however, Europe was in the midst of a war and the composer’s preoccupations were different. The change is obvious from the warlike off-stage drum rolls at the beginning of the Un poco lento, marziale, which is not so much a movement in itself as a threat which has to be faced by the principal thematic protagonists of the work and overcome before the last movement can begin - which, as the mood changes from foreboding to triumph and as the tempo accelerates, it most exhilaratingly does.

In terms of sustained celebration, the Allegro vivace, marziale finale can be compared only with the equivalent movement of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, except that Enescu’s counterpoint is even more imaginative and his structural purpose even more ambitious. Setting out with a cheerful march theme, Enescu proceeds to do nothing less than develop and recapitulate all the themes of the symphony in one long and impetuous procession. The one significant relaxation in the tempo is made to accommodate the Don Juan theme from the Andante giusto, now presented on several wind instruments in unison, accompanied by weird sounds on the harmonium and muted strings, and interrupted by heavy octaves on the piano. It is taking a risk to admit erotic reflection at this stage but, of course, the underlying momentum is such that it is easily restored for the final approach to the jubilant ending.

Gerald Larner