Romanian Rhapsody No.1 Op.11/1

If
she had lived, Mihaela Ursuleasa had asked to perform this work in this year’s
Festival, where she was due to appear. It is a work redolent of Enescu’s and
her homeland’s folk music and it seemed perfect to conclude this concert
dedicated to her memory with a joyful display of prodigious piano technique
without a hint of maudlin sentiment.

By
the end of his life Enescu was heartily sick of the popular success enjoyed by
his Rhapsodies, which had eclipsed all his other
works. Nonetheless despite the mature composer’s scornful opinion they retain
their popularity and Enescu himself made the piano transcription that we hear
this evening. The brightness and freshness of the Rhapsodies lie in the spontaneity with which different contrasting
dance-tunes and songs succeed one another without any labouring of thematic
connections. Although the music does set up occasional clever thematic
superimpositions, they are accomplished with such ingenuity that the effect is
of two streams flowing smoothly in parallel, rather than a turbulent clash of
currents. Later in life he claimed to have just thrown together a few tunes
without thinking seriously about it. However sketches survive that show he put
a lot of thought into the process with the tunes carefully numbered and ordered
with a series of drafts on connecting passages. As always the appearance of
effortless ease in a work – and indeed in its performance – is the result of
intense preparation and hard work as well as the creative spark.