Orchestral Suite No. 3 (Enescu)

The Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, Op. 27, subtitled "Villageoise" in French ("Săteasca" in Romanian), is an orchestral composition by the Romanian composer George Enescu, written in 1937–38.

History

In 1936, Enescu received a commission from the New York Philharmonic-Symphony orchestra for an orchestral composition to be premiered in January 1938. He began work in April 1937, though he incorporated into the new work sketches that had been made earlier. Although the score of the "Village" Suite was virtually completed in late 1937 or early 1938, Enescu was not yet satisfied that the score was quite yet ready, and postponed the performance (Gilman 1939). The final touches were put to the suite, according to a note in the manuscript, on 4 October 1938, at the composer's villa, Luminiș, in Sinaia (Firca and Niculescu 1971, 928–29). The delayed first performance took place on 2 February 1939 at Carnegie Hall in New York by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer (Downes 1939). Although contemporary reports at the time of the premiere said the score was also dedicated to the New York Philharmonic-Symphony (Anon. 1939; Downes 1939; Gilman 1939), the score as published in 1965 bears a dedication to the memory of Elena Bibescu (Malcolm 1990, 275).

Analysis

The suite is in five movements, each bearing a programmatic title in French:

1. "Renouveau champêtre" (Renewal [i.e., Spring] in the Country)
2. "Gamins en plein air" (Children Outdoors)
3. "La vieille maison de l’enfance, au soleil couchant; Pâtre; Oiseaux migrateurs et corbeaux; Cloches vespérales" (The Old Childhood Home at Sunset; Shepherd; Migratory Birds and Crows; Vesper Bells)
4. "Rivière sous la lune" (River beneath the Moon)
5. "Danses rustiques" (Rustic Dances)

The work follows a programme presenting a day-night-day sequence, as Enescu had done nearly forty years earlier in his Op. 1, Poème roumain, and would do again two years later in the suite Impressions d'enfance for violin and piano, Op. 28. Nevertheless, Enescu transforms his descriptive writing into the realm of absolute music in one of his most sophisticated orchestral compositions (Malcolm 1990, 205). Programme music, however, is rare in Enescu's output. Apart from the two works just mentioned, he touched on it in some of the Pièces impromptues for piano (1913–16), and programmatic elements remain concealed in the Third Symphony and the tone poem Vox maris (Bentoiu 2010, 374).

There is considerable disagreement about the forms of some of the movements, as well as the larger question of whether Enescu employs cyclic procedures in this work (Bentoiu 2010, 373–74, 385-86).

References

• Anon. 1939. "Van Vactor to Give Symphony Tonight: Winner of Philharmonic Prize to Conduct Own Work". New York Times (19 January): 23.
• Bentoiu, Pascal. 2010. Masterworks of George Enescu: A Detailed Analysis, translated by Lory Wallfisch. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7665-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8108-7690-3 (ebook).
• Downes, Olin. 1939. "Rumanian Music Given by Enesco: Conductor's Own 'Villageoise' on Philharmonic Program at Carnegie Hall; Dragoi Suite Presented; First American Performance for the 'Capriccio Roumain' by Mihailovitch". New York Times (3 February): 18.
• Firca, Clemansa, and Ștefan Niculescu. 1971. "Anii celui de-al doilea război mondial (1939–1944)". In George Enescu: Monografie, 2 vols., edited by Mircea Voicana, 927–1016. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România.
• Gilman, Lawrence. 1939. "Notes on the Program", Ninety-Seventh Season, 1938–1939: 3474th and 3475th Concerts, under the Direction of Georges Enesco, Guest Conductor-Composer (Carnegie Hall, Thursday Evening, February 2, 1939 at Eight Forty-Five; Friday Afternoon, February 3, 1939 at Two-Thirty): [unpaginated]. New York: The Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York. Leon Levy Digital Archives (accessed 10 April 2017).
• Malcolm, Noel. 1990. George Enescu: His Life and Music, with a preface by Sir Yehudi Menuhin. London: Toccata Press. ISBN 0-907689-32-9.

Further reading

• Firca, Clemansa Liliana. 1968. “La IIIe suite pour orchestre de Georges Enesco”. Revue roumaine d'histoire de l'art: Théâtre-musique-cinéma 5:163–76.
• Niculescu, Ștefan. 1958. "Aspecte ale creaţiei enesciene în lumina simfoniei de cameră". Studii muzicologice No. 8:5–44.