Enescu Symphony 3 etc. from Ondine

Started by Alan Howe, Wednesday 09 October 2013, 08:53

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sdtom

I found the #4 Study Symphony on Olympia but not the first. It appears to be on Vol. 6 which is not available.
Tom


eschiss1

Bentoiu writes about some of the 5th symphony here (and about a partial completion by Taranu; I am not certain that when he wrote this book he had undertaken- his 1990s completions. The Google copyright says 2010, but I think it's just a translation of a 1984 Romanian book by Bentoiu. Still, lots of music examples from many Enescu works, the symphonies, plural, included). "The composer managed to orchestrate 152 of the approximately 220 bars of the first movement..." etc.

Hrm, yes and no and yes and no and...--
p.522: "Addendum to the 2nd edition. While I do not wish to alter at all my book of 1984..." - a section on his unfinished symphonies specifically, added after Bentoiu had prepared perf. editions. So for some information about those, one can look there. (And yes, he notes separately the school symphonies ("study symphonies") composed between 1894 and 1898.)

chill319

I'm not sure why Enescu is being discussed in this forum, but it is true that his fifth symphony is a retrospective work that sounds far more friendly to pre-Great War sensibilities than his tone poem Isis of twenty years earlier, which is startlingly modern.

With Symphony 5 Pascal Bentoiu had, at the start, most of the first movement in full score, and for the rest a short score. So CPO is really bringing us a great deal of authentic Enescu. The transition from Enescu the orchestrator to Bentoiu as orchestrator is not entirely seamless but is nearly so. Those who, like myself, think Enescu one of the great geniuses of music, cannot but be grateful for his efforts.

Alan Howe

QuoteI'm not sure why Enescu is being discussed in this forum

Well, much of his music fits here perfectly well. And the subject of the thread is the 3rd Symphony which is entirely suitable for discussion at UC.

sdtom

Quote from: Alan Howe on Monday 09 February 2015, 07:59
QuoteI'm not sure why Enescu is being discussed in this forum

Well, much of his music fits here perfectly well. And the subject of the thread is the 3rd Symphony which is entirely suitable for discussion at UC.

I think it is too. In fact I didn't start the thread at all, Alan did.
Tom :)

Alan Howe


sdtom

I just completed listening to the new recording from Ondine of his 1st symphony. It will replace my Marco Polo CD from 1991 as the sound on it is somewhat muddy.
https://sdtom.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/symphony-no-1-in-e-flat-major-op-13george-enescu-1881-1955/

I'm hoping that the series will continue.
Tom :)

eschiss1

I enjoy many Marco Polo recordings - including some of the Enescu ones (chamber, mostly, I think) - but for his orchestral music it's a good thing there's quite a lot of competition (including some good broadcasts of 4 of the 5 numbered symphonies- including the 2 completed by Bentoiu- from the 2011 Enescu Festival, unfortunately no longer available as uploads from here... used to be. The performance of no.1 conducted by Christian Badea seemed quite good, but I like very much what little I've heard of his work- mostly excellent performances of difficult to conduct, multi-layered modern music (some of which I like very much and his ability to communicate what's in the score (and help, or not mess up :D, articulate[ing] it) has seemed among the best.) (Which seems to have been one thing Enescu and Schoenberg did share for all that they didn't- their later scores are -filled- with "additional" articulation marks aplenty (no more than are needed, of course*)

*but - well... - wasn't I displeased when a teacher returned my final exam for a college [music] composition class with a note asking if I'd learned anything, from him or from the composers we studied (in that or some other classes I'd taken he'd taught), about the need to articulate more... not less (and the why of it, too.) (And no, I didn't really understand, not back then :))