George Enescu was one of the most complete musicians ever to draw breath. His heroic status among Romanians, and his continuing significance to Romanian culture, can hardly be overestimated. British readers might conjure up a composite of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Thomas Beecham and Yehudi Menuhin. Imagine that this figure was known abroad only for Pomp and Circumstance. It’s then possible to understand why Romanians want so passionately for the world to appreciate Enescu as more than the composer of the Romanian Rhapsody no.1; why (for example) the long-running concert series at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London is named after him; and why the largest annual celebration of classical music in Romania is known as the George Enescu Festival.
Alternating each year between a concert festival and a competition, in 2023, the Festival welcomed orchestras, soloists and singers from across the world to Bucharest for a typically ambitious month-long programme. Within just five exhausting and exhilarating days, I caught Martha Argerich and Charles Dutoit, the Salzburg and Manchester Cameratas, and the small matter of Ligeti’s Le grand macabre and Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise in semi-staged performances. Scurrying between the opulent Athenaeum (Ateneul Român) and the vast Communist-era Palace Hall (Sala Palatului) for afternoon and evening events, audiences were numerous, diverse, informed and enthusiastic.
This year, Bucharest plays host to the George Enescu International Competition, of comparable breadth and international scope, taking place from 31st August to 27th September. Four divisions encompass violin, cello, piano and composition, each with their own juries, overlapping so that one division begins as another reaches its semi-final stage. As the Director of the Festival for the last two years, the conductor Cristian Măcelaru has worked to give both its concert and competition elements an international profile, in the image of Enescu himself. “The overriding theme from the inception of the festival in 1958 was to promote the music of Enescu,” he says. “But it would be impossible to have a festival every two years and focus only on him.”
Enescu was in every way a generous man, Măcelaru tells me, and he wants the festival to reflect this generosity of spirit. “We all have to give back what we do in order to make it art. This is what he said: music becomes art once you share it.” As the conductor points out, the Festival’s long-term success may partly be judged by a wider awareness of Enescu’s music over the last 30 years, from the Octet to his long-gestated opera, Oedipe, which has come to define his status as underappreciated modernist. “His style matures over time as he acquires a knowledge of the entire Western canon,” says Măcelaru. “He anticipated trends such as neoclassicism, but by the end of his life he is producing works such as the Chamber Symphony which is basically serialist: everything is locked in.”
Pointing to influences on Enescu ranging from Wagner and Richard Strauss to Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, Măcelaru observes that Romania sits in a “Goldilocks zone” of Europe: “neither too far to the east nor to the west. As a nation, we have always tried to find alliances either in the west or the east depending on the politics of the time. Transylvania is a wonderful cauldron of multiculturalism.” It is this outward-looking perspective that informs Măcelaru’s vision for a truly international competition.
The 2024 Festival opens on 31st August with a concert given by the Romanian Radio Orchestra and led by the Bulgarian conductor Delyana Lazarova. The winners of the instrumental divisions of the 2022 competition return as soloists in the Triple Concerto by Paul Constantinescu, and the winning composer that year, Shin Kim, will be represented by his First Symphony. The concert reaches a fitting conclusion in the Poème roumain which Enescu wrote as a teenager. The event also serves as the awards ceremony for the composition competition, after an international jury has assessed portfolios of submissions to award prizes in orchestral and chamber-music categories, worth €10,000 and €7000 respectively, with a special additional €5000 prize for “Originality”.
As the director of the new-music California Festival, Măcelaru is sensitive to the challenges of judging originality and appraising new work, beyond standards such as technical competence in matters of harmony and instrumentation. “That’s why we have 11 very different jury members: a significant number of successful composers. Some of them are unbelievable orchestral composers, in terms of understanding the colours that an orchestra can produce. Some of them are committed to the avant-garde, and others are quite traditional. It’s the most diverse pool of jurors that we've ever had, from Romania and Germany and eastern Europe. I work with all these composers in my performing life, so I know the personalities involved – and I wanted to be in the room when all these people meet and talk to each other about what's happening.”
Beyond monetary value, a composing prize may bring far-reaching benefits. Măcelaru reflects: “Pierre Boulez was once asked how a conductor can become better. And his answer was, conduct better orchestras. It’s the same for a composer. Thinking and visualizing and hearing your composition in your head is not enough. One reason why Mozart and Beethoven were so successful is that they performed their own music so much, they heard it so often, and were able to adjust it on the spot. But a composer who doesn’t perform their own music hears it in public maybe once a year. It’s tragic, really, because how else are they supposed to develop? It is my wish that every composer could have humans playing their music – rather than MIDI files, which may help you achieve anything, but they can’t tell you anything back.”
When a single figure becomes emblematic of a country’s musical identity, later composers may struggle to emerge from their shadow (think of Nielsen in Denmark and Sibelius in Finland). Ștefan Niculescu and Horațiu Rădulescu are only two of the names at the forefront of Romania’s postwar avant-garde who have yet to win the recognition enjoyed by their contemporaries such as Ligeti in Hungary and Lutosławski in Poland. Yet Romania’s first-rate system of musical education continues to produce many gifted composers, and the Enescu Festival plays its part by commissioning native composers to write pieces for the instrumental divisions of the festival. Sebastian Androne-Nakanishi has written the new work for the Cello division, Vlad Maistorovici for Violin and Doina Rotaru for Piano.
Prospective entrants are invited from across the world to register by 10th May at the competition’s website, concurs.festivalenescu.ro. (Composition entrants have until 30th June.) The juries for each division reflect an international depth of experience, led by David Geringas (cello), Dmitri Sitkovetsky (violin), Lilya Zilberstein (piano) and Zygmunt Krauze (composition). The competition finals will be conducted by Jonathan Bloxham (in the cello division), Alan Buribayev (violin) and Christian Reif (piano). Finalists are competing for prizes of €15,000, €10,000, €5000, support from an internationally renowned artist-management company, and a string of attendant future potential engagements across Romania. Inevitably, Enescu’s music also features, and a separate award is made in each division for the best performance of his work.
All the same, Măcelaru sees the value of the Enescu Competition as reaching beyond monetary award or the discovery of the next star performer. “The journey is the purpose of the competition itself.” He reflects on his formative years as a violinist. “I remember looking at competitions, and the only thing I focused on was the prizes. I didn’t even look at the requirements until I read what the prizes were! I understand that desire, and the pressing need of young musicians to do that. But I want to encourage them to treat this as just one step on their journey.
“Where you end up in the competition has so much to do with how you feel in the week itself: what the weather is like outside, how prepared you feel in yourself. There are so many factors that you cannot control as a competitor. What you can control is your attitude towards the goal that you have set yourself. If you use the Enescu Competition as a launching pad, to do your best not as the outcome of the competition itself, but as a point of arrival and then further exploration, then I think you can really benefit from it.”
See our complete guide to the 2024 George Enescu International Competition.
This article was sponsored by Artexim – George Enescu International Competition and Festival
