This collection of chamber pieces by the young George Enescu, written in his teens and early twenties, presents music that's very rarely played, at least outside of Romania. It might not seem a high-priority repertoire, yet the album offers at the very least an hour of pleasant listening that reveals this composer's considerable melodic gift at the point where it was just flowering. Enescu's most famous compositions, the pair of Romanian Rhapsodies for orchestra, were written in the middle of the time span delimited by these works, and it is interesting to hear how he develops ideas for those larger pieces. There are vigorous dances, not only Romanian (try the Vivace Saltarello from the Nocturne et Saltarello for cello and piano of 1897 on track 8), melodies that seem to hang between tonality and folk modal scales, and a light melancholy that verges on the salon without ever settling in there. The assortment of young European chamber musicians involved here gives the music just the right balance.
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