The greatest of Romanian musicians, George Enescu was equally remarkable as a violinist and as a composer. He was born in Liveni (a town renamed after the composer following his death), Romania on 19 August 1881, and received initial violin lessons from a gypsy violinist. On the advice of Eduard Caudella, pupil of Vieuxtemps and then the most prominent Romanian composer, he went to the Vienna Conservatoire in 1888 where he studied violin with Joseph Hellmesberger the younger while taking lessons in counterpoint and composition with Robert Fuchs. In 1893 he went to Paris to take composition lessons from Jules Massenet and then Gabriel Fauré at the Conservatoire, studying counterpoint and fugue with André Gédalge and violin with Martin Pierre Marsick. In 1897 a programme of his music was given in Paris and by 1899, when he won the Conservatoire’s First Prize for violin playing, he was fast becoming established as a composer. In 1904 he formed the Enescu Quartet, playing with such eminent contemporaries as Pablo Casals, Jacques Thibaud, Alfred Cortot and Fritz Kreisler.
Enescu did a great deal to encourage young musicians, mainly through the conservatoires in Bucharest and Iaşi. He spent the First World War in Romania, giving many concerts for the International Red Cross, as well as establishing the George Enescu Symphony Orchestra in 1917 in Iaşi after Bucharest had been occupied by the Central Powers. Soon after the war he resumed his international career as a virtuoso, though tending to reserve the summer months for composition, but the Second World War saw him confined once more to Romania. After the war he returned to Paris and undertook an intensive round of concerts and masterclasses, despite illness that affected his spinal column and later his hearing. The swift establishment of a Communist dictatorship at home and removal of the royal family, to which Enescu had always been loyal, made any intended return to Romania increasingly unlikely and his final years were spent in New York then Paris, where any activities were blighted by increasing poverty and ill health made worse as result of a stroke. He died in Paris on 4 May 1955.
Opera
Enescu’s only opera, Oedipe, draws on Sophocles and on the whole legend of Oedipus, from birth to death. The result of many years of intermittent work, it was first staged in 1936, but has never retained a place in international operatic repertoire. It is a demanding work of remarkable power.
Orchestral Music
Although much that he wrote may be of greater musical significance, Enescu’s most popular composition is the Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. His music, however, is wide in range and includes a variety of works of some substance and originality.
Chamber Music
Enescu wrote chamber music for varying ensembles, including a wind Dixtuor (a work for ten instruments), a String Octet, quartets, trios and duo sonatas. These last include two cello sonatas and three violin sonatas, the third of which has proved popular abroad for its use of Romanian melodic material.