George Enescu: String Octet in C gr.t. op.77

George Enescu

(19 August 1881 – 4 May 1955) was a Romanian composer, violinist, pianist, conductor, and teacher

 String Octet in C gr.t. op.77

 

The Octet for Strings in C major, Op. 7, is a composition by the Romanian composer George Enescu, completed in 1900. Together with the Octet by Niels Gade, it is regarded as amongst the most

notable successors to Felix Mendelssohn's celebrated Octet, Op. 20 (Taylor 2008, 132).

 

Enescu's composition stands in contrast to Felix Mendelssohn's Octet, which sets a soloistic violin part against an accompaniment of the other stringed instruments. Enescu's work on the other hand is "a genuine octet that finds its most natural ｅxpression just in its hallucinatory convergent and divergent contrapuntal voices" (Bentoiu 2010, 16). Stylistically, the Octet stands outside the categories into which most of Enescu's works from before the end of the First World War fall, when he was still working his way through a wide range of styles and influences, including those of César Franck, Ernest Chausson, Henri Duparc, Claude Debussy, and Richard Strauss (Malcolm 1982, 32).

The form is described by the composer as cyclic, and divided into four movements:

1. Très modéré
2. Très fougueux
3. Lentement
4. Mouvement de valse bien rythmée

However, these four sections are linked together to form a single large sonata-allegro form movement (Enescu 1950). The first movement functions as the exposition and the finale as recapitulation, while development is pursued in the inner two movements. The idea of cyclically integrating all of the movements of a symphony into a single overarching form can be traced back to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and was developed further by Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt. The most likely model for Enescu's organization of the Octet is the latter's Piano Concerto in E♭ major (1855) which, even more than Liszt's B-minor Sonata pursues the outline of a sonata form throughout its four movements (Bentoiu 2010, 12–13).

There are between nine and as many as twelve melodic themes used in the work, depending on the analysis (Hoffman and Raţiu 1971, 259; Bentoiu 2010, 13). The greatest number of them (six or seven) are presented in the exposition of the first part. The second part is a kind of demonic scherzo, tumultuous and whirling, while the third is a lyrical, slow movement; in both of them new themes are added (Hoffman and Raţiu 1971, 259).

 

 

 

 

Janine Jansen and Friends:

Opgenomen 28 december 2009 in Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht.