George Enescu - Suite no. 2 op. 10 - Charles Richard-Hamelin, piano

00:12 - I. Toccata
04:16 - II. Sarabande
11:32 - III. Pavane
17:26 - IV. Bourrée


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GEORGE ENESCU (1881 – 1955)
During his lifetime, George Enescu’s compositional output was eclipsed by his brilliant career as a soloist, chamber musician, conductor, and teacher. A virtuoso violinist who taught the likes of Yehudi Menuhin and who performed with Dinu Lipatti and Pablo Casals, Enescu was also an excellent pianist whose technique was admired by none other than Alfred Cortot. Enescu himself premiered his Piano Suite No. 2 in D major, Op. 10 in 1903. Three of the four movements were written for an international composition competition organized that same year by the magazine Musica.

To the “Toccata” composed two years earlier during a stay in his home country of Romania, he added a “Sarabande”, “Pavane”, and “Bourrée” to form a suite that he submitted to the jury under the title of Des cloches sonores (Ringing Bells). The bell image works particularly well for the rich, vibrant textures of the opening “Toccata” and the closing “Bourrée”. Enescu here seems to use a definition of “toccata” dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, when it could mean a fanfare-like work. Unlike the perpetual motion character of the toccatas from Debussy’s 1901 Suite pour le piano and the conclusion of Ravel’s Tombeau de Couperin (1918), Enescu’s Op. 10 Toccata alternates full, majestic writing that makes liberal use of the pedal and that spans both ends of the piano’s range with thinner, more articulate writing, thereby evoking different stops on an organ.

In the introduction of the noble, dream-like “Sarabande”, the arpeggiated chords accompanying the melody, played in octaves with the right hand, evoke the strumming of guitar strings, an accompaniment style that returns from time to time as the movement unfolds.

The “Pavane”, which bears the indication “lentement bercé” (slowly rocking), is the most intimate movement of the work. In the opening lines, the melody, with its free rhythm ornamented with trills and marked “quasi flûte” (flute-like), could be heard as an allusion to Romanian folk music; however, in a suite so highly imbued with French influences, it remains a very subtle evocation.

Much more exuberant – at times even pounding – with moments of dramatic intensity not yet reached in the previous movements, the opening of the “Bourrée” manages to be at once festive and solemn, with a motive in parallel thirds in the right hand that undeniably evokes a trumpet call. This motive takes on great importance as the piece unfolds, its rhythm or melodic shape variously taken up in different registers of the keyboard, culminating in an almost orchestral climax shortly before the end.

Notes by Florence Brassard
Translation by Peter Christensen
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