Georges Enescu: Symphonies 1-3; Romanian Rhapsodies 1 & 2 in Bloomington, MN

The symphonies of
George Enescu
have had their champions,
Yehudi Menuhin
among them, but one would not quite call them part of the ordinary symphonic repertory. Conductor
Cristian M¿celaru
may be the right person to put them there, and not just due to the common Romanian background of the two.
Enescu
wrote three symphonies, began but did not finish a
fourth
and
fifth
, and revised the
second
third
repeatedly. They are complex works with many small moving parts, yet they also have a large Wagnerian sweep, and
M¿celaru
catches this balance well, with the
Orchestre National de France
stepping up to the rigorous instrumental work. The symphonies are, perhaps, half
Wagner
or
Strauss
and half
Franck
, with steps into chromatic harmony that mark them as of their time (the three works were written in the first two decades of the 20th century). The finale of the
Symphony No. 2 in A major, Op. 17
, begins with a highly effective funeral march that seems prophetic given the work's completion date of 1914.
's performances are not of the monumental type and perhaps require some investment of energy from the listener, but they yield many pleasurable details. At the beginning, in the more tuneful
Romanian Rhapsodies, Op. 11
, the most famous works here,
delivers sprightly, tuneful readings. The level of definition in
Deutsche Grammophon
's engineering at the Auditorium de Radio France, perhaps not a venue its technicians know well, leaves something to be desired, but one learns from the booklet that this recording was made with support from the Romanian Cultural Institute, and its money was well spent. The album made classical best-seller lists in the spring of 2024. ~ James Manheim