Œuvre pour piano seul

Description

A panorama of George Enescu’s piano works, this box set deserves special attention. The composer’s youth is first represented here by pieces “in the old style.” Op. 3 is a reworking of Bach, moving and often cautious. The barcarolle and the two impromptus remain faithful to this elegant polyphonic style, which Enescu would refine in his later Prelude and Fugue (1901), where he proves himself a master of contrapuntal ornamentation. Enescu enjoys revisiting the classics: a “Spinning Wheel” or a few impromptus and a barcarolle that are more playful nods than imitations. The suite “Des cloches sonores” Op. 10 and the Op. 18 pieces point as much to Brahmsian rhapsody as to a very French Impressionist vein (all sprinkled with Ravelian and Debussyan echoes, influences Enescu claimed). The long, digressive Nocturne recalls those of Fauré (on whose name he would compose a lovely miniature). One must delve into the third CD to find the works belonging to the Romanian’s formal and expressive world. Composed between 1900 and 1935, the three sonatas constitute a laboratory for the conception of the dense harmony of the opera Oedipe and the convoluted architecture of the symphonies. Modal ambiguity and sublimated folklore, at once of a tormented spirit and a highly elaborate structure, the Sonata in F sharp reaches “the universal dimension of a Bartók or a Janáček” (F.R. Tranchefort). Pianist Raluca Stirbat brings these scores close to us, intimate, thanks to her delicate, velvety touch and her languid, restrained rhythm. This highly personal musical language seems here to us of touching humility. (Jérôme Angouillant)