Compositeur Direction Pianiste Professeur

Description

George Enescu was born in 1881 in Liveni Virnav and passed away in 1955 in Paris. His hometown has been renamed and today bears the name of this most important Romanian musician. Pablo Casals called him "perhaps the greatest musician since Mozart." Enescu was a composer, conductor, pianist, violinist, and teacher. Among his students were Grumiaux, Gitlis, Ferras, and Menuhin. He was also the godfather of Dinu Lipatti. The 10 CDs in this selection provide, for the first time, a broad impression of the various aspects of his career. Including a live recording from 1951, it also features the very last audio documents of this extraordinary artist. At the age of four, he was already playing the violin and composed just a year later. His studies in Vienna were followed by his concert debut in 1889 and further years of study in Paris, with Massenet and Fauré, among others. In 1898, the world premiere of his opus 1, the "Romanian Poem," took place with the Colonnes concerts. That year, he also conducted for the first time in Bucharest. In the following years, he founded the Enescu Prize for composition, conducted the Romanian premiere of Beethoven's 9th, and inaugurated Wagner's "Lohengrin" at the National Opera. In protest against the communist regime, he did not return to Romania after a tour in the United States.