Symphony No. 3 (Enescu)

Enescu in 1922

Symphony No. 3, Op. 21, in C major is a large-scale orchestral-vocal composition by the Romanian composer George Enescu, written in 1916–18.

History

Enescu began writing the Third Symphony at Sinaia in May 1916, shortly before Romania entered the First World War. The second movement was completed at the height of the conflict, in January 1918, at Iași, and the third was finished on 20 August of the same year (Malcolm 1990, 125, 274). The premiere date is disputed. According to one authority the Symphony was first performed in 1918 and then again at least once in the same year (Bentoiu 2010, 544n12). According to another, however, the first performance did not take place until in May 1919 at the Athenaeum in Bucharest, with the Orchestra of the Ministry of Education, conducted by the composer (Malcolm 1990, 128–29). Although the symphony was an immediate success, Enescu was not satisfied with it and undertook a revision in 1920. The new version was premiered in Paris at the end of February 1921, conducted by Gabriel Pierné, but Enescu still was not satisfied and continued to revise the score for more than thirty years. The latest revision is dated 12 June 1951 (Malcolm 1990, 129; Bentoiu 2010, 196, 544n12). It was not published until 1968, by the Editura muzicală a uniunii compozitorilor din Republica socialistă românia in Bucharest.

Analysis

Stage of the Athenaeum, Bucharest

The symphony is in three movements:

Enescu employs the same thematic material throughout the symphony, cyclically, but develops it in different ways. The first movement alternates brooding, questioning, heroic, and lyrical moods; the second movement is a darkly sinister scherzo, relieved briefly by a bright march episode; the finale is solemn and serene, introducing a wordless choir. It ends in "a sort of quiet ecstasy" with the lightest of orchestral textures and employs at one point a small bell which, according to the score, "should have the same sort of sonority as the bells which are used in Catholic churches at the Elevation of the Host". The strongly contrasted characters of the three movements—and especially the paradisal serenity of the finale—have tempted some critics, beginning with Pierre Lalo in 1921, to interpret the symphony programmatically as a "Dantesque trilogy" of Purgatory (alternatively, Earth), Inferno, and Paradise (Malcolm 1990, 125, 128).

Discography

References

Further reading

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