Enescu. Beethoven

George Enescu’s First Symphony was premiered on 21 January 1906 at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in Paris as part of a series of concerts conducted by Édouard Colonne. Prior to the outbreak of World War I, the young Romanian composer was living principally in Paris and spent the summer months in his native land. French symphony music was then staring hard times in the face: neither Massenet nor Debussy nor Ravel, the leading composers of the day, was writing symphonies. At the same time, Enescu adopted the tradition and supported it. Like César Franck’s famous symphony (1883), his First is in three movements. At times, in the music one can hear echoes of Wagner, whose influence French composers at the time were struggling to throw off. The stunning orchestral effects of the second movement bring Debussy to mind, while the severity of certain episodes speaks of how neoclassicism was just around the corner.
Enescu wished to see over one hundred instruments in his orchestra – seventy-six strings, two harps and a tremendous variety of wind instruments (including, in line with the French tradition, two trumpets and two cornets). Neither Enescu’s first or subsequent symphonies have any national characteristics. The success of Romanian Poem (1898) and the two Romanian Rhapsodies (1901) did not tempt the composer to introduce folkloric material in works in a more serious and lofty genre, one employed to speak not of the personal but rather of the universal.
The First Symphony is dedicated to the Italian composer and pianist Alfredo Casella. Together with him, Enescu performed in a trio in 1902, and both had previously studied at the Paris Conservatoire, to which Enescu had been admitted as a fourteen-year-old wunderkind, having by then already graduated from the Conservatoire in Vienna. Anna Bulycheva

Ludwig van Beethoven completed his Seventh Symphony in the spring of 1812. The work was not performed, however, until 8 December 1813 in a programme together with the “battle symphony” Wellington’s Victory, or the Battle of Vitoria. Following the years-long Napoleonic Wars, Austria was in a state of triumphant euphoria, and Beethoven’s newest symphony reflected the general mood better than anything else. The Seventh Symphony soon took its honoured place in the “cultural programme” of the Congress of Vienna.
Wagner referred to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony as the “apotheosis of dance.” It is, indeed, imbued with energetic rhythms and it contains not a single truly lento movement. The music of this symphony does not move from suffering towards joy – here the joy reigns throughout, starting with the first movement and concluding in utter ecstasy in the finale.
Beethoven dedicated the score of the symphony to his friend and patron Count Moritz von Fries and the arrangement for piano to Empress Elizabeth Alexeyevna, wife of Alexander I of Russia.
Anna Bulycheva