Enescu: String Quartets Nos. 1 And 2

Description

George Enescu(1881-1955)String Quartets Nos. 1& 2The Romanian composerand violinist George Enescu may now be seen as the most important figure in themusical history of his native country. Born in Moldavia in 1881, he had hisfirst violin lessons there from a gypsy violinist. On the advice of EduardCaudella, a pupil of Vieuxtemps and professor at the Iaşi Conservatory, hewas sent, at the age of seven, to the Conservatory in Vienna, where he waseventually taught by the younger Joseph Hellmesberger, taking counterpoint andsubsequently composition lessons from Robert Fuchs. In 1893 he moved to Parisfor further study as a violinist with Marsick and composition lessons fromMassenet and then from Faure at the Conservatoire, with important studies incounterpoint and fugue under Andre Gedalge. In Gedalge's class hiscontemporaries included Koechlin, Ravel, Roger-Ducasse and Florent Schmitt andother fellow-students included the pianist Alfred Cortot, who expressed hisadmiration of Enescu's ability as a pianist. In 1897 a concert of his work wasgiven in Paris and by 1899, when he won the first violin prize at theConservatoire, he was already known as a composer. His subsequent careerbrought him similar distinction both as a performer and as a conductor.Although Enescu'sactivities were centred on Paris, he maintained his contact with Romania,returning home in regular summer visits. In 1904 he formed the relativelyshort-lived Enescu Quartet with Fritz Schneider, Henri Casadesus and LouisFournier, but at the same time performed with other contemporaries of thehighest distinction, including Casals, Thibaud, Casella, Cortot and, in privatechamber music, at least, with Kreisler. The greatly respected older violinistEug?¿ne Ysa??e, for whom Cesar Franck had written his Violin Sonata, dedicatedto Enescu the third of his unaccompanied violin sonatas, the Sonate-Ballade.Meanwhile his international career as a violinist was developing. InRomania he did much to encourage younger musicians, through theBucharest Conservatory and the Conservatory at Iaşi. He spent the waryears largely in Romania, where he gave concerts for the wounded, once Romaniahad entered the war on the side of the Allies, and established the GeorgeEnescu Symphony Orchestra in 1917 in Iaşi from the musicians he couldgather, now that Bucharest had been occupied by the Central Powers. With theend of the war he was able to resume his international career, generallykeeping the summer months for composition, but the second war in 1939 confinedhim once more to Romania, now as the husband of the unstable Princess MarucaCantacuzino, with whom he had enjoyed a happier relationship for some 25 years.After the war he returned to Paris and continued an international round ofconcerts and master classes, in spite of an illness that affected his hearing.The Communist regime at home and the abdication of the King, representative ofa royal family to which Enescu had always been loyal, kept him abroad, alt