George Enescu
George Enescu (Romanian pronunciation: [ˈdʒe̯ordʒe eˈnesku] ⓘ; 19 August [O.S. 7 August] 1881 – 4 May 1955), known in France as Georges Enesco, was a Romanian composer, violinist, conductor, and teacher and is regarded as one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history.[1]
For the commune, named for the composer, see George Enescu, Botoșani.
George Enescu
19 August 1881
4 May 1955 (aged 73)
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France
Romanian
Jurjac, Georges Enesco
Romania
France
Maria Tescanu Rosetti (m.1939 – 1955)
Elena Dinu
- Costache Enescu (father)
- Maria Enescu (mother)
Commemorations[edit]
Enescu founded the Enescu Prize in composition, which was awarded from 1913 to 1946, and afterwards by the National University of Music Bucharest.
Eugène Ysaÿe's Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, subtitled "Ballade" (composed in 1923), was dedicated as an act of homage to fellow-violinist Enescu.[26]
While staying in Bucharest during the 1930s, Enescu lived in the Cantacuzino Palace on Calea Victoriei and married its then owner, Maruca Cantacuzino, in 1939. After the Communist takeover, the couple occupied a part of it briefly before moving to Paris in 1947. Following Enescu's death in 1955, Maruca donated the palace to the Romanian state in order to organize a museum [1] in memory of the great musician.[27] Likewise, the Symphony Orchestra of Bucharest and the George Enescu Festival—initiated by the musicologist Andrei Tudor[28] [2] and supported by his friend, musical advocate, and sometime collaborator, the conductor George Georgescu—are named and held in his honor,[29] and the composer's childhood home in Liveni was inaugurated as a memorial museum in 1958.[30]
Earlier still, in 1947, his wife Maruca donated to the state the mansion near Moinești where Enescu had lived and where he completed his opera Oedipe, provided that a cultural centre be built there.[31] In Moinești itself there is a street named after the composer,[32] as well as a middle school.[33] In addition the renamed George Enescu International Airport at Bacău is some twenty miles away.[34] Then in 2014 the home of Enescu's maternal grandfather in Mihăileni, Botoșani, where the composer spent part of his childhood, was rescued from an advanced state of dilapidation by a team of volunteer architects and now houses a centre of excellence for the study of music.[35]
Enescu's portrait appeared on the redesigned 5 lei Romanian banknote in 2005.[36]