Enescu Symphony No.4

[Alan Howe]

...forthcoming from cpo:
https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/cpo/detail/-/art/george-enescu-symphonie-nr-3-op-21/hnum/7136600

[Alan Howe]

Although the link suggests this will be symphony no.3, in fact it seems to be the completion of No.4. More confusion from cpo...

[adriano]

That sounds better, Alan :-)

[chill319]

A must buy for me, though I wish the teaser said a bit more about how much of the finished product comes from Enescu's own pen. The fifth symphony, for example, was left in rather the same condition as Mahler 10: a first movement mostly orchestrated and more-or-less clear sketches of the remaining movements requiring creative realization. A propos this forum, the fifth has the late 19th century on its mind quite often*; it will be interesting to see if the fourth is more modern (in an earlier work like Isis Enescu could be startlingly modern).

(*Except that Enescu had long since moved away both from inelastic periodicity [at the level of the musical sentence] and from the "Hegelian" symphonic processes typical of post-Beethoven 19th-century symphonies -- as well as of his own Symphony 1. Lacking familiar processes and structural sign-posts, these later symphonies demand intensive listening. I doubt they'll ever be very popular. For some, though, the aha moments, when they come, are big ones.)

[britishcomposer]

I have a recording with Camil Marinescu conducting the Philharmonia Hungarica. This was made in the late 1990s. According to the introduction to this broadcast 45 % of the work have been scored by Enescu himself. This includes the first movement and a quarter of the second. For the rest of the work detailed sketches on two staves of manuscript paper survive. Pascal Bentoiu spent the whole year 1996 working on these sketches. To me the result is very convincing. It is a work I have come to appreciate very much.

[eschiss1]

Bentoiu says the same on p.524 (pagination of the 2010 English translation) of "Masterworks of George Enescu" (Addendum to the Second Edition, where he discusses the 4th and 5th symphony sketches and completions, works which he did not discuss in the first edition, I suppose. "the finished segment consists of the entire initial movement, the most developed one (approx. 11 min.), and about 2 minutes, 30 seconds, from the beginning of the second movement, hence about a quarter of it. Enescu connects in his score the three movements..."  I can't seem to get ahold of the book at the moment aside from Google Preview, but on pp.526-528 he writes about the 4th symphony in some more detail.

(I forget if we have the movement headers of the 4th symphony- I think perhaps-- but if not, the 2nd movement is Un poco andante, marziale; the finale, Allegro vivace- non troppo.  ... First movement's probably somewheres- hrm- other sources give I. Allegro appassionato (with varying spellings of the latter.)

[chill319]

Good to know, britishcomposer and Eric. I have a copy of the 1970 Soviet bio by Kotlyarov. It is generous in sharing images of Enescu MSS, including three sketchbooks,  but neglects to mention unfinished works.