Enescu Octet

[Barbirollians]

I have been listening to the new recording of this piece by Vilde Frang and seven other fine string players including Lawrence Power on Warner this morning and am mightily impressed by it . It seems a rather little known work . I had never heard it before.

Anyone know anything about it or why it seems so little known and played.

Slightly odd is its coupling with the Bartók VC1 rather than another chamber work. The performance of the Bartok 1 however is superb on a par with the Chung/Solti to my ears .

[LMcD]

There are at least 3 complete performances on Youtube, one prefaced by a note signed Enesco (sic).

[mikealdren]

I have the ASMF performance, not recommended, it's a bit dull. I heard Lawrence Power and friends (not Vilde Frang) play it a couple of years ago and it was superb, totally changed my view of the work. I'll have to get the new recording.

[Pulcinella]

There has been mention of this work in other threads (members with better search powers than I have might find them!). I certainly remember mentioning the Dixtuor (it was post #13 in Recommendation required for a high quality chamber work), and then the Octet was mentioned, but I suspect it cropped up elsewhere too.
Maybe we need an Enescu thread in the Composers subforum.

[Serial_Apologist]

There are at least 3 complete performances on Youtube, one prefaced by a note signed Enesco (sic).

I did use to see his name thus spelt; perhaps that was more common in earlier times?

[Serial_Apologist]

There has been mention of this work in other threads (members with better search powers than I have might find them!). I certainly remember mentioning the Dixtuor (it was post #13 in Recommendation required for a high quality chamber work), and then the Octet was mentioned, but I suspect it cropped up elsewhere too.
Maybe we need an Enescu thread in the Composers subforum.

I would start one but know too little about Enescu: like Medtner, for example, he's one of those composers whose music is not easily assignable to the 20th century, yet doesn't somehow seem to belong anywhere else. Time for a COTW, I reckon.

[Dave2002]

I did use to see his name thus spelt; perhaps that was more common in earlier times?

Indeed, though I think the pronunciation hasn’t really changed.

The Sacconi quartet played the octet with the Wihan Quartet at their festival in Folkestone in 2017 - it does get outings sometimes.

[Dave2002]

The Sacconi Quartet will revisit this piece in Chester next year - http://sacconi.com/diary/

There’s a Shostakovich octet too - I didn’t know he’d written one.

Shostokovich: Octet Op 11
Mendelssohn: Octet E flat Op 20
Enescu: Octet in C Op 7

[pastoralguy]

The Sacconi Quartet will revisit this piece in Chester next year - http://sacconi.com/diary/

There’s a Shostakovich octet too - I didn’t know he’d written one.

Shostokovich: Octet Op 11
Mendelssohn: Octet E flat Op 20
Enescu: Octet in C Op 7

My goodness, that's a LOT of notes!

[pastoralguy]

Although I'm a big fan of Vilde Frang, I was going to pass on this cd until Andrew played an extract of Record Review a few weeks ago. (I was driving to Penny Lane in Liverpool at the time to realise a long cherished ambition to see it for myself so I'll always remember where I was when I first heard the Enescu Octet!) I thought it was a wonderful piece and immediately ordered the disc which I played over and over.

My theory is that it takes 8 absolutely virtuoso players to play it really well so perhaps its difficulty is an obstacle.

[Dave2002]

I was driving to Penny Lane in Liverpool at the time to realise a long cherished ambition to see it for myself...

It's really not that thrilling!

[pastoralguy]

It's really not that thrilling!

I wouldn't rush to go back but it was still worth doing.

[Dave2002]

I wouldn't rush to go back but it was still worth doing.

I hope you did do or see some of the other things which Liverpool has to offer. Penny Lane would be way down the list of things to do or see in that area IMO - but I can understand the desire for a "pilgrimage". Also, some parts of Liverpool have changed considerably in the last couple of decades or so, though in fairness such change has also happened in many UK towns and cities.

[jayne lee wilson]

The Enescu Octet is an intensively contrapuntal symphonic elaboration, and the main problem in performance is (it seems, inevitably) a tendency to over-elaborate, by giving too much emphasis to subsidiary lines and motifs, obscuring the main melodic and rhythmical line and impetus. The Frang-led newcomer doesn’t avoid this - indeed is one of the least satisfactory as the players also tend toward fussiness of phrase and rubato (listen to the hushed return of the main tune in the coda to (i), which is pulled about too much in an attempt to lavish espressivo care upon it; loving it to death, or, almost literally, to bits…)…
The finale is taken too fast, the waltz apotheosis lacking weight or, more damagingly, any real schwung; the final notes too brusquely dispatched.
Balancing musical argument against teeming detail is an inherent musical problem here of course, as in several other Enescu works; it took him many years to find his own unique simplicity.
But it does no harm if the ensemble bring out the main melodic line towards the end, rather than allowing those busy violins to crawl all over it too parasitically, undermining the exultant sense of arrival. And you really do need that sense after such a long, demanding journey!
A remarkable achievement for Enescu, not yet 20 years old, the Op. 7 Octet of 1900 stands apart from his early works for its sheer ambition, inspirational quality and intense thematic integration. But he took up the thematic proliferation and epic length again, from Symphony No.2 and the 1st String Quartet onwards. So very different from the Suites and Rhapsodies!

The other Celebrity-Octet version led by Weithaas, Tetzlaff and Faust isn’t a great deal better, with a rather cool atmosphere and again, a lack of that essential sonic cohesiveness which is very elusive in recordings of it. No Love Island then.
Not only the line, but the texture, need to have at least as much unity - warmth and togetherness - as detail.
Of the earlier chamber versions, the two Romanian tapings stand out for this very reason, and their in-the-blood idiomatic feel for the phrase and momentum of the work; simplicity and directness of utterance. My preference (just) is the Arte Nova one, with the Ensemble of the George Enescu Budapest PO, which while not tonally sumptuous, helpfully sets the Octet spaciously mid-hall, rather than the forward position on the new one.
The Marco Polo one, with the Voces & Iasi Quartets, goes very well too, with wonderful warmth and an easy sense of flow, above all the right sound, which so few have; the rather boxy, airless recording isn’t too offputting, and the slower tempi, especially in the finale, are only to the music’s benefit - something of a revelation.
The Voces have recorded most of Enescu’s chamber works on Electrecord/Olympia, and pretty definitive they are; no other offerings have that sound…the violins especially have a quasi-gypsy character, like a tzigane…

The best full string-orchestral version I’ve heard, by the Kremerata Baltica on Nonesuch, is led by Kremer with marvellously musical sense of purpose and panache. I’m not over-fond of the larger sound in this piece, but the warm, cohesive and rhythmically tight presentation wins me over, yet relaxes where it should. The Kremerata has become a favourite performance; in fact the work can benefit from the more unified sound a larger group can bring, clarifying and intensifying the musical argument - as Enescu himself seemed to recognise.
And that finale - Bien rhythmée indeed - really does exult. So often disappointed by recordings or broadcasts (often due to a less-than-convincing finale) - only this, and the Enescu-Budapest Octet version, really hit the bullseye for me here.

You can find several recordings, happily including the Marco Polo and Nonesuch albums, on Qobuz (now available in its latest Studio hi-res iteration, & very wonderful it sounds) to stream. Other services may offer them too. The Arte Nova and other CDs are still available fairly cheaply. If you’ve only heard the more recent cosmopolitan constellations, either of the Romanian tapings should come as something of an epiphany.

[jayne lee wilson]

Anyone else followed this up and listened around?

I keep trying with the Frang (streamed in 24/96 on Qobuz Studio, so - every chance!), I so hoped to like it - but I still find it all a bit wood-for-the-trees; too soloistic, individually virtuosic for its own sake, lacking that innate sense of timing or warmth of tone - the Ensemble approach which can allow a continuous single-breath feel to the musical narrative. Beautiful slow movement - I’ll give them that. But the finale seems the more disappointing, the more I hear it; it doesn’t move well and the great swinging dance never really comes through.
(I know they're giving it their all; but it may simply be down to the group not playing together, qua ensemble, very often... hence the audible benefit of Quartets x 2 or string orchestras...)

I feel rather as I did about the BBCSO/Behlolavek Martinu Symphonies: they have their merits, glad to see the music getting attention, but - in terms of idiomatic rhythm, phrase and the sheer sound itself, there are better readings out there, essential to hear if you really want to get what the music has to tell you….

I heard the Monte Carlo/Foster orchestral version - very nicely done from a devoted Enescophile, part of a fine series; slightly distanced and “objective”; but tonally sweet, spacious and strikingly weighty through the finale climax; just lacking the compelling flair and dynamism of the Desnyatikov/Kremer. But again showing the expressive and structural merit of the slower tempo through the finale - even if it sounds too relaxed at first.

It made me reflect once again on whether the gorgeous, so-lovable Octet is better on the larger ensemble after all…
(…whisper who dares… maybe it isn’t really an Octet…that was merely its first mutation…)

“Symphonic Fantasy for String Orchestra, Op.7 (b)”