George ENESCU - The Three Piano Suites [RB]: Classical CD Reviews- Sept 2003 MusicWeb(UK)

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George ENESCU (1881-1955)
Suites for solo piano: No. 1 in G minor Dans le style ancien Op. 3 (1897) [19.40]; No. 2 in D major Op. 10 (1901) [22.21]; No. 3 Pièces Impromptues Op. 18 (1913-16) [36.54]

Luiza Borac (piano)
rec. 23-30 March 2003, Stadttheater Lindau, Bodensee. DDD
AVIE AV0013 [79.06]

It reflects well on Borac and Avie that such an ideal and unhackneyed programme as this should have been chosen. The music is unfamiliar, the timing is ample and the liner notes are models of freshness and span. Both the indefatigable Martin Anderson and the thoughtful and virtuosic Luiza Borac contribute articles.

The four movement First Suite, the work of a fifteen year old composer, is thoroughly well defined by neo-baroque and neo-classical criteria. The first three movements are decided Bachian with trills and badinage as well as Olympian atmosphere. Ms Borac rescues the music from any heaviness. The final movement is closer to Hummel or early Beethoven (last movement of the First Piano Concerto). The adagio is the most refreshingly impressive movement (tr. 3).

The Second Suite breaks from the bondage of the past and from neos and retros of any sort. The first movement's romantically majestic chiming makes way for the arpeggiated lyric dreamland of the Sarabande and the humid phantasmal meander of the Pavane. The Bourrée is like much of the rest of this attractive suite - a fusion of Debussy, Warlock and Poulenc.

The Third Suite is in seven movements. It is contemporary with the Great War - the twelve months before the start and two years into hostilities. The style is yet more swirlingly impressionistic (tr.13), scathingly fantastic (tr.12), discordantly exuberant (tr. 15) and poised than in the Second Suite. Carillon Nocturne with its grotesqueries, Chinoiserie and atonality leans in and out of Schoenberg's Hanging Gardens and Cyril Scott's Lotusland. This movement shows Mlle Borac at her most impressive with her powers of concentration unwavering. It rounds out the disc in an enigmatic mist: elusive and sphinx-like.

Rob Barnett
see also review by Kevin Sutton

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