Chamber Music +

George Enescu (1881-1955) George Enescu entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1894 at the age of 13. His teachers included Jules Massenet and Gabriele Fauré. Today we know Enescu primarily as a composer, but he began his life in music as a violin prodigy, and it was in this capacity that he met Johannes Brahms whom he came to adulate and, especially at the beginning of his compositional career, began to imitate. After completing his studies at the Conservatoire, Enescu began composing in earnest. In 1897 a concert was given in Paris devoted entirely to his works. In 1899, at age18, his first two orchestral compositions were premiered, and he completed the Op.6 violin sonata programmed in this CCMF concert series. 1901-1902 saw the premieres of his two most well-known works, the Romanian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2 , and in 1906 his Symphony No. 1 in E-flat Major was premiered in Paris. Enescu wrote of this symphony, 'The god of my own youthful adoration was Brahms, and I w

Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959) The 1927 Duo for violin and cello was composed in the years when Martinů was the leading Czech musical correspondent in Paris, shuttling back and forth to Prague and reporting on the Parisian musical scene to the Czech cultural press. In Paris he studied composition with Albert Roussel and assimilated many of the trends of the time including jazz, surrealism, and neoclassicism. He was especially taken with Stravinsky's music. During these years he likely heard such characteristic works as Stravinsky's Octet , Concerto for Piano and Winds , and Serenade in A . But as much as one can hear the influence of Stravinsky's neoclassical style in his music at this time, Martinů's own voice clearly comes through. One of the interesting features of the Duo is just how incredibly close the violin and cello lines remain throughout the work, both vertically, as they often share a narrow range of pitches, and horizontally, as