Georges Enesco

Georges Enesco Composer

Biography

Georges Enesco was born in 1881 in Liveni-Virnav, Romania. From an early age, he was immersed in Moldavian folk music, and very quickly learned to play the piano and the violin. At age seven Enesco went to the Vienna Conservatory, where he discovered the works of Beethoven, Wagner and Bach. He studied composition, analysis and counterpoint and learned to master the rondo, sonata and variation.

In 1895, he entered the Paris Conservatoire and studied under Martin-Pierre Marsick in violin, Gabriel Fauré and Jules Massenet in composition, and André Gedalge in contrepoint. Both an excellent violinist and composer, he wrote in Paris his first pieces, among which Poème roumain, played in 1898 at the Concerts Colonne. This was followed by Les Rhapsodies roumaines (1901-1902), his first Suite for orchestra (1903) and his First Symphony (1905). Between 1907 and 1908, he composed the cycle of the Seven Songs by Clément Marot, created in the presence of Claude Debussy.

At the end of World War I, he split his life between Romania and France, where he composed, among others, his Sonata for violin and piano n°3 “in Romanian Folk Style” (1926) and his opera Œdipe (1923-1930). He took part in French or Romanian creations of compositions by Fauré or Ravel. During World War II, he returned to his native country where he composed a chamber music triptych : Impressions for piano and violin (1940), Quintet for piano and strings (1940) and his Second Piano Quartet (1944). After the war, he performed numerous times in Moscow with David Oïstrakh and Emil Gilels, and in Bucharest with Yehudi Menuhin. The new communism regime forced him into exile in Paris, where he died on May 4, 1955.

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