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PAN PIPES • SPRING 2017 • sai-national.org 20 D E I J K N O P T U A World of Music A World of Music A WORLD OF MUSIC Visiting Enescu in Romania By Jayne I. HanlIn "I was the five: violinist, pianist, composer, conductor, teacher," George Enescu (1881-1955) said of himself. His colleague, renowned cellist Pablo Casals, described this remarkable man as "the greatest musical phenomenon since Mozart." Enescu learned to play by ear from his first teacher, Nicolas Chioru, a Gypsy fiddler. At the age of seven, George was admitted to the Vienna Conservatory. Later, to complete his musical studies, he went to Paris mainly to study composition with Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré. In France, he became known as Georges Enesco. Enescu's memory was encyclopedic. Not only did he always play from memory but apparently remembered and could reconstruct Beethoven's symphonies, quartets, trios, Missa Solemnis, and Fidelio; play any passage from almost all of Wagner's operas; and aer sight-reading Ravel's violin sonata once, closed the music and played it by memory. Nonetheless, in spite of his incredible abilities, he remained unassuming all his life. I have visited only two of the three Enescu museums in Romania. e first, George Enescu Memorial House, which opened in 1995, is located in his small summer house called Luminiş Villa ("Glade of Light") in the resort town of Senaia. With its mountains, valleys, and forests, the area is picturesque; for twenty years the composer returned here for rest and inspiration. During the summer of 1927, in one of its attic rooms, 11-year-old Yehudi Menuhin (who became one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century) studied violin with Enescu — then and forever aer without charge. Once Queen Marie of Romania was listening to this child prodigy from the next room. So taken with his ability, she gave him a copy of her own work, e Queen of Roumania's Fairy Book (illustrated by N. Grossman-Bulyghin and published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, 1925) with this inscription: "To Yehudi from Marie." e downstairs of Enescu's country home has several rooms; the museum's English audioguide describes in detail their function and contents. e folding doors between the adjoining reception/dining room and sitting room/salon (which was the largest room) opened for concerts; even today there are recitals in this space. But during my visit, I had to settle for background music—a recording of the composer's most popular Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. Much of the furniture is Transylvanian Biedermeier, but there are objects—ceramics, crystal, porcelain—of Persian, Dutch, and Turkish styles as well. On top of the Ibach grand piano is a black bound copy of Oedipe, Enescu's opera, which took him over two decades to complete. He considered this his magnum opus. Its premiere was in Paris in 1936; its first performance in London, however, was not until eighty years later. Near the age of sixty, Enescu married Măruca, with whom he'd fallen in love many George Enescu's Ibach grand piano and a copy of his opera Oedipe sitting atop it at his Memorial House in Romania.

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