(Aired 06/16/2024) Channel NYCTV-life (WNYE) – Romanian TV of New York (RTVNY). On May 8, 2024, Carnegie Hall hosted the final performance of The Orchestra Now Carnegie Hall series this season. The concert spotlighted four European virtuoso violinists who were also major composers in their countries however less known in this capacity elsewhere today. Led by Leon Botstein, its founder and musical director, The Orchestra Now offered a program entitled “Violinist as Composer,” and included works by Grazyna Bacewicz, Joseph Joachim, Eugene Ysaye, and George Enescu. The program included the Carnegie Hall debut of award-winning Russian violinist Nikita Boriso-Glebsky who joined the orchestra in the New York premiere of Eugene Ysaye’s Violin Concerto in D minor and Joseph Joachim’s Variations for Violin and Orchestra. The second half of the concert featured George Enescu’s three-movement Second Symphony written by the composer between 1912 and 1914 at a time when he was also one of the most in-demand concert violinists in the world. The composer’s own modesty and reluctance to self-promote as well as the difficulty of his mature works for the performers, were all factors that added to his relative lack of popularity. The Second Symphony’s destiny complicated matters even more. After the Symphony’s premiere in Bucharest at the Romanian Atheneum in 1915, George Enescu abandoned it, unwillingly, for the rest of his life. During the First World War the only copy of Enescu’s Second Symphony along with other works accompanied the Romanian government’s gold reserves on a train to Moscow where it vanished for years. After it was eventually returned to the composer it remained unpublished until 1965, a decade after Enescu’s death. The work was not performed again until the conductor Iosif Conta revived it in 1961. Although praised by Yehudi Menuhin as a masterpiece, Enescu described the Second Symphony as “far from finished” and declared that he intended a thorough revision of it; this unfortunately was never done. It is impossible to speak about Enescu without a reference to his extraordinary gifts as a composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. His friend, revered Spanish cellist Pablo Casals, described Enescu as “the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart.” George Enescu wrote about his artistic heritage in clear, simple words: “Having a foundation in German education and living in Paris, which I adore, while being Romanian by birth, I am essentially international, and insist on being perceived as such, despite the adoration I have for my native country and the many treasures of Romanian folklore.” The Orchestra Now (TŌN) currently comprises 59 young musicians from 13 different countries across the globe, hand-picked from the world’s leading conservatories.
Editor & Producer: Cristi Boghian
Contributor: Doina Boghian
Romanian TV of NY (RTVNY)
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