George Enescu, the Pianist in the Light of his Contemporaries’ Reviews and Recollections

PROF.DR. LAVINIA COMAN, PH.D.

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MUSIC BUCHAREST

ABSTRACT: The exhaustive research of George Enescu's life and work highlights his incomparable piano mastery in the context of his exceptional performances as a violinist, conductor, teacher, guide of the young generations of musicians. The present study evokes the first contacts of the gifted child with the keyboard, his growing satisfaction in using this instrument to play any kind of music, as well as his legendary appearances as pianist in chamber ensembles or instrumental duo with other great performers of the time. Also, the Enescian creation dedicated to the piano is presented, underlining its original contributions to the formation of a Romanian pianistic thinking.

KEYWORDS: ENESCU PIANIST, CAUDELLA, CARMEN SYLVA

AS THE BIOGRAPHICAL sources and memoirs of the age attested, Enescu’s genius manifested itself early and spectacularly in its following hypostases: violinist, composer, pianist, and conductor. In time, that of teacher would be added to them in some of its most varied means of expression. The mastery of the pianist favoured this polymorphic genius’s ability to compose fluid sound structures in a discourse that raised eyebrows from his very first attempts through its complexity and prolificacy. Examined at the Iași Conservatoire by composer Eduard Caudella and later in Paris, the highly gifted child insists on displaying his ability to play the piano after having proved his violin prowess. His desire to make music is described with psychological acuity by George Bălan in his first monograph dedicated to the great master: “With the same determination with which he had persevered in his stubbornness of playing by ear, little Enescu was now starting to learn the notes. What stimulated him above all was his surprising discovery that he was able to fix on paper the melodies he had been improvising and to reproduce them exactly as they had first come to mind. It was fun! But the child felt even more stimulated from the moment when one day, a cart stopped in front of his house, and people pulled down a huge crate from it. It was an upright piano that his father, enthusiastic about his son’s ardour, had ordered as a gift for him. The child’s interest in the professional study of music turned into passion. How poor the violin seemed, with its four strings, compared to this wonderful instrument with dozens of keys, which allowed you to play several sounds at the same time, to add a harmonic jewel to the melodies.” (Bălan G. , Enescu, 1963, p. 17) In his memoirs, the artist evokes the moment as follows: “My piano was neither a Steinway, nor a Gaveau; it was a very old and modest instrument, dry, completely hostile to any nuances one may have expected; but I had a piano at last! I gladly exchanged the monodic instrument that I had been playing so far for a polyphonic instrument; when the only thing you could do was play melodies, with no accompaniment whatsoever, how good it felt to chain chords! A glass of fresh water can bring nothing but pleasure to the thirsty...” (Bălan G. , Enescu, 1963, p. 18) Once registered with the Vienna Conservatoire as one of Helmesberger Jr.’s students, he admired Brahms, who was in the final years of his life, and who would sometimes appear in chamber concerts as conductor or as improvising pianist. From his childhood, Enescu remembered such moments: “Sometimes, he (Brahms) would sit at the piano: he played admirably, like a great virtuoso; I must confess, however, that he would sometimes hit the keyboard too hard... As early as that I loved his music passionately. I listened to it with deep emotion, not only because I found it wonderful, but also because it evoked my home country.” (Bălan G. , Enescu, 1963, p. 36) The years of training in the two capitals of musical Europe, Vienna and Paris, brought to Enescu, among other benefits, the extraordinary opportunity of seeing and hearing Brahms, and later Fauré, Saint-Saëns, Massenet, Vincent d’Indy, Debussy play, and of having fellow conservatoire students such as Ravel, Florent Schmidt, Roger Ducasse. Becoming a professional within the musical family of the two schools – German-Austrian and French – allowed him to turn into a true European artist and remove the music of his country from its provincial isolation, propelling it into universality.

Proceedings of the „George Enescu“ International Musicology Symposium Proceedings of the „George Enescu” International Musicology Symposium Overwhelmed by the demands of a brilliant career as a virtuoso violinist, Enescu always fought for the right to compose music, yielding to the irrepressible desire that possessed him. “To Enescu, working on a composition meant continuously moving from the table to the piano and from the piano to the table. From his memoirs we learn that he worked at the table in order to see clearly and tidy up the form. When he looked for colour, he sat at the piano: this is how he orchestrated – playing. He imagined that the fourth finger of his left hand activated a bassoon, or that the pinkie of his right hand triggered a flute; for the rest, he hissed, whistled, turned into a ‘one-man-orchestra’, as he himself would say. Answering the question ‘Do you compose with or without the help of a piano?’ Enescu said ‘I, for one, work partly on the piano. Twice in my life I did not use a piano. Not having access to the instrument, I composed my second symphony almost entirely at the table; I made a terrible effort back then and swore never to do it again, as this piece has never satisfied me. In the same circumstances I also wrote the Orchestral Suite No. 2, which has fortunately left me with a better impression (Bălan G. , Enescu, 1963, p. 139).” There are numerous testimonials and records of the fact that the artist was happy when he could sit at the piano and improvise freely. Such moments were real shows of inspiration and high spontaneous mastery. To this effect we have several dozen notes made by Queen Mary in the three volumes of her War Journal. The sovereign writes about the musician who was the most faithful friend of the royal family, who was taking refuge in Moldavia in the middle of the disaster, of the tragedy brought about by the war: “Pinx played wonderfully, it was a very pleasant musical evening”, “Pinx performed magnificently, he concluded by playing fragments from Parsifal on the piano”, she talks about “the sounds of Pinx’s grandest music”, being strongly moved by “an unparalleled interpretation, which could almost rip you soul and heart out (Jurnal de război, 2014-2015, p. 425).” The extant photographs, the accounts of the witnesses, various diaries and reviews depict an entirely mature artist with a mild and robust appearance, seated in a natural posture behind the keyboard. His body language conveys his focus, balance, sobriety, modesty, a profound inner experience that he shared with his audience with generosity, but also with the slightly embarrassed delicacy of revealing his inner life. Whether he improvised freely on a (self-) imposed theme, he accompanied a violinist or a cellist on the piano, or performed in a chamber ensemble on the piano, the artist would fuse with the ensemble, becoming an inseparable part of the phonic complex. When accompanying a singer, he would always achieve the miracle of complete fusion between the two partners in a single expressive flow. We cannot help but mention his fabulous capacity as sight reader of the most complicated piano scores, but also his legendary musical memory. His close admirers would say that Enescu had the entire history of music stored in his mind, which he could always demonstrate on the piano. In an attempt to define Enescu’s piano style, we shall formulate certain specific features, such

as:

- his entirely original way of treating the piano as an instrument with “vocal” virtues. The specificity of Enescu’s melodies, which unfold in a continuous discourse, finds its most suitable pianistic embodiment in the “cantabile” representation. In his supple melodic progressions and his polyphonic warps that remain entirely specific to the keyboard instrument, the main dimension is always the horizontal line, and the required form of expression is predominantly vocal. - the distinct individuality of the toccata style, at the opposite pole of the cantabile style. The phonic apparatus and its means are simplified to the extreme. The ensuing result is the transparency and clarity specific to the neoclassical ideal, which is achieved, for instance, in the first movement of the Sonata in D Major, where noisy rhetoric and any intention of massiveness are sacrificed to the benefit of the crystalline simplicity of the discourse in which “all the notes can be heard”. - a judicious distribution of “fills and gaps” within a phonic architecture in which dense surfaces tend to be reduced and framed within large aerated, rarefied surfaces. The use of the medium and high registers is preferred, the low one being usually employed as support, and almost never thematically. The transparency of Enescu’s writing is also due to the nature of his harmonies: the massive chords are reserved to climaxes, while “balanced” writing and perfect intervals (fourths, fifths, octaves) are used commonly. - Enescu’s pianistic style is impregnated with the plasticity of his details. The melismatic character of his sonatas allows the melismata to be integrated organically into his long-winded melodies and often become part of the theme. Thus very few ornaments preserve a merely decorative function. - dynamics and types of attack contribute to the originality of Enescu’s discourse. His dynamics are extremely rich, especially in the area of low nuances. There are at least eight registered dynamics, from mezzo piano to the fading into the void (niente). Separated by infinitesimal differences, starting from niente and up to FFF, the scales of dynamics are amplified in successive waves. More often than not, these are withdrawals and recurrences wrapped in a general tendency towards diminuendo, apart from the rare moments of climax placed at key points throughout the discourse. The types of attack are multiple and highly differentiated. From legato-cantabile to staccatissimo and martellato, the richness of the ways of attack requires the pianist’s great hearing sharpness and his great promptness in adapting

Vol . XX, 2021 Vol. XX, 2021 his gestures appropriately. The indications of expression – made not only for large surfaces, but also for a single sound – lend the scores a dense, crowded aspect, even where the music is aerated. The pedal notation is also marked with great scrupulosity and reflects the author’s exceptional craftsmanship in using it.

- the creator’s endeavour to enrich the expressive vocabulary of the orchestral piano, which does not mean to turn the piano into an orchestra, but to extol its fundamental virtues. Thus the vocal, cantabile effect is conceived by the composer as an effect of purely pianistic essence through the intimate adherence to the keyboard, through the symbiosis between performer and creator that he himself experienced intensely. The multiple aspects of his vision can only be understood through the in-depth parallel study of his creation and interpretation as pianist. His compositions dedicated to the piano brilliantly illustrate these features of style and expression. The less than ten main opuses for piano signed by the artist established the art of the contemporary pianist, and profiled trends, ideas, and aspirations that were to materialize later on, in today’s piano playing. There are not many of them, only three suites, two sonatas, a theme with variations for two pianos, and a number of small-scale compositions, but of emblematic value, which are essential to the further development of Romanian piano playing. Based on the musical ideas and realities we have expounded, we can conclude that George Enescu’s piano oeuvre is the work of a pianist, just as the performer’s art was marked by the creator’s seal. Therefore, this oeuvre consecrates him as a continuator of the great romantic poets of the piano, as well as one of the most original pianists of the twentieth century.

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