Enescu’s Favorites

Composers and their public often disagree about which works have the most merit. The favorite work of the Romanian composer George Enesco is one rarely heard today-his Romanian Poem.

It was the Romanian Poem that launched his career as a composer. It was his first published work, written in 1897 when Enesco was only sixteen. The work is in two parts. The first evokes a summer evening, with the sound of distant church hells, the modal singing of priests, and a shepherd playing a slow, melancholy Romanian song. In the second, a storm breaks and then moves away. A cock crows and a country festival begins with a series of dances. The orchestral poem concludes with the Romanian national anthem.

During an interview a third of a century later, Enesco recalled that the most emotional moment of his life had been the first performance of the Romanian Poem in Paris.

The debut was a major success. It won enthusiastic reviews, two of them by composer Paul Dukas, who remarked upon the certainty of the writing, the skillful instrumentation, and ‘the extraordinary grasp of rhythmical effects and contrasts of timbre.’

Not surprisingly, the reception of the Romanian Poeme in Bucharest was even more enthusiastic. Suddenly Enesco was famous all around Romania. A committee was established to buy him a violin worthy of his talents as a soloist. Public contributions and matching funds from his father enabled the teenaged phenomenon to buy a Stradivarius.

Two years later, George Enesco would become internationally famous with his two Romanian Rhapsodies, which — to his chagrin — would eclipse everything else he wrote, including his favorite, the Romanian Poem.