On Enescu, and the Piano Sonata in F#minor op. 24, no. 1

The writing of the Piano Sonata in F# minor op. 24 no. 1 in 1924 was commenced while Enescu was shrouded in the creative haze of the labour-intensive orchestration of his opera Oedipe. Enescu first envisaged the huge undertaking of writing an opera of the scale and complexity of Oedipe as early as 1906. He worked on the opera intermittently. Enescu was a world famous violinist, conductor and pianist, frequently on tour in America and Europe. The outbreak of the First World War complicated matters further – his manuscripts for Oedipe were lost for several years in Bolshevik Russia, where they had initially been sent for safe keeping during the War. The orchestration took ten years to complete; the opera was finalised only in 1931, and premiered in Paris in 1935, to great critical acclaim.

I first heard the music of this Sonata in my own family home: my father had been a pianist, and this Sonata had been part of his core performing repertoire. As a young boy, I remember being perplexed by the beauty of its final movement. Naturally, the strange and shifting music of the first and second movements was not to be readily grasped by a twelve year old.

At the outset, the score looks intimidating: polyphonic writing, superimposition of themes, minutely detailed instructions on phrasing, and sophisticated rhythmic structures. Not least, there are considerable demands on the pianist in terms of precise nuances of expression and timbre. Enescu’s directions includes a plethora of specific but infrequently used terms such as ben piano, ben forte, cantabile sostenuto, cantabile largamente, cantabile senza rigore, etc.

In spite of the abundance of notations and the complexity of the writing, performing this music is enormously satisfying. It is after all, Enescu – the great performer and virtuoso of the 20th century– who puts his mark on the intricate pianism of the Sonata. What initially appeared tremendously complexity on paper becomes unambiguous and free and even spontaneus when performed. The meticulous writing is simply an accurate and practical guide to the acoustical effects envisaged by the composer.

The Sonata begins with an ominous apparition: both hands intoning an uncanny line resembling the Oedipe motif from his eponymous opera. The effect is indeed menacing. Through the various harmonic and motivic meanderings which the music leads us through, we recognise that most of the material is derived from this opening theme. Appearing as a three-voiced composite, the second theme is built on the Oedipe motif as its bass line. One can identify Expressionistic and post-Romantic outbursts of passion, delicious Impressionistic harmonies and, before the beginning of the looming coda, a brief episode inspired by Romanian folk music.

If the first movement glows under the tragic aura of the Oedipian myth, the second movement evokes the mundane world, the joyous folk music of the village. Enescu’s extraordinary skill as a composer manages to convert the piano’s keyboard into a cimbalom, an instrument from Central Europe where the strings are hit by wooden spoons. Through a continuum of rapid and vivacious rhythms, the music conjures a traditional round dance, called hora. One can perhaps recognise at times the wit and lightness of Poulenc’s style, or sudden occurrences of Stravinskian outburts, or jazzy Gershwinian chords.

Enescu said that in the third movement he had attempted to awaken images from his childhood memories, by trying to capture the feeling of the Romanian plains at night. The opening 'cowbells', with their tranquil and almost hypnotic vibrations trigger the appearance of this idyllic landscape. It is a remarkable movement, where Enescu combines elements of folk music with the supple variation of colours, dynamics and harmonies of the French style.

(copyright Cristian Sandrin, from Correspondances)