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Customer Reviews of Enescu: Piano Quintet / Piano Quartet 2

Enescu's Homage to Fauré
A few months ago I submitted a review of Gidon Kremer's group playing Enescu's Octet and the Piano Quintet included on this disc. In preparing that review I was forced to start thinking about Enescu's style and although at that time I was having some problems coming to terms with the Quintet, this current issue has helped me crystallize my thinking (and, I think, come to understand the Quintet better, finally). It's simple, really: Enescu is an Impressionist Romantic. Is there such a category? Well, maybe I just invented it. But come to think of it composers like Szymanowski and Scriabin may be Impressionist Romantics, too. See what I mean? These composers use impressionist harmonic procedures in the service of writing pieces with Romantic gestures. Sums it up pretty well, I think.

These two pieces are very similar (which, considering they have consecutive opus numbers, probably isn't too surprising). Each is a three movement work, the first two movements of which are rather dreamy or introspective and very subtle in their form and content, particularly in the manipulation of thematic materials. At first one thinks, as one often does with Impressionist-sounding pieces, that they are somewhat meandering, somewhat formless. But nothing could be further from the case, hence my use of the term 'subtle.' They hang together without being obvious about it, and then culminate in a rip-roaring (well, relatively speaking) finale. For me, each of these finales is the high point of its piece. Perhaps that's because the subtlety of the first two movements leaves one with a yearning for some kind of outspokenness and some sort of summing up. And that's what these two finales do. They are each affirmative, using dance rhythms, assertive dynamics and a kind of sureness of purpose to balance the meditative, even diffident nature of the the two earlier movements, and making for a satisfying whole.

Along the way, in both pieces, there are striking melodic turns, harmonic sideslips, nothing ever aggressive or bombastic, but still unique enough to catch one's attention. The writer of the booklet's notes, Richard Whitehouse, mentions Enescu's acknowledged debt to his old teacher, Gabriel Fauré, and that is spot on. There is much here that reminds me of the late Fauré String Quartet, Op. 121 and his own late Piano Quartet, Op. 120 (two more consecutive opus numbers!). But they are a bit beefier than Fauré somewhat attenuated masterpieces.

The players here, The Solomon Ensemble, consisting of Anne Solomon & Andrew Roberts, violins; Ralf Ehlers, viola; Rebecca Gilliver, cello; and Dominic Sanders, piano, are obviously 'inside' the music. My only quibble would be that occasionally their playing (I think it's that, rather than the CD's engineering) is a bit too plain-spoken for the subtlety of the music. Still, I suspect that's just my taste for French string playing and certainly their approach is creditable. I'm glad to have a second version of the rarely heard Piano Quintet. I think I prefer the Kremer group's recording of it, but only by a hair.

Naxos has provided generally clear, true sound and there are excellent booklet notes by both Keith Anderson (a synopsis of Enescu's life and work) and Richard Whitehouse (on the pieces on this disc).

Scott Morrison