August Enna (1859-1939)
Concerto for Violin & Orchestra in D major (1896)
Symphony No.2 in E major (1907)
Anna Agafia (violin)
Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá/Joachim Gustafsson
rec. 2022, Teatro Taller Filarmónico, Bogotá, Colombia
Dacapo 8.224753 [66]
Every nation has creative artists like the Danish composer August Enna. People who were giants in their time yet less than a century after their deaths have faded to obscurity and at best a footnote in history. As the very interesting liner by Jens Cornelius for this new Dacapo release puts it; “No Danish composer had such great international success around the turn of the 20th century as August Enna”. Cornelius goes on to attribute his disappearance from the musical scene to; “his musical style, which did not bear much resemblance to Danish traditions, and his unruly personality which earned him many opponents”. I would add to that a very conservative musical voice – albeit an attractive one – that appealed to contemporary audiences but now sounds somewhat ‘safe’ from a historical standpoint, especially in the context of other music written around the century’s turn. Enna’s fame in his lifetime rested on his operas with his 1892 Heksen (The Witch) hailed as the “most sensational opera since Carmen and Cavalleria rusticana”– it was performed in 40 European theatres in the year following its premiere – an astonishing fact. But you will look in vain for any recording of the opera. Indeed the entire Enna discography is pretty limited. Ever-exploratory CPO has produced discs that include the two works recorded here – with additional orchestral couplings – plus another of his fairytale ballets; I have not heard any of these alternative versions. Add some songs and piano music and that is just about it.
The Violin Concerto in D major that opens this new disc is a work that I previously reviewed for MWI some fourteen years ago here. Suffice to say that that performance made little impact to the point I had no recollection of my review until revisiting the work anew. The earlier performance was part of the monumental – but flawed – project by violinist Kai Laursen to document over twenty little-known Danish violin concerti. Constraints of time and budget meant that those performances were compromised by some pretty rough playing and often murky radio-sourced recordings. Fortunately this new performance technically and interpretatively is in a completely different league. While no lost masterpiece the concerto emerges as significantly more interesting than my previous dismissal as having just “modest charm” would suggest.
This is the second recording that I have had the pleasure of reviewing recently from conductor Joachim Gustafsson and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá. Gustafsson has been the orchestra’s music director since 2021 and is clearly achieving great things with them. The previous disc was of very standard repertoire – two Beethoven piano concerti – which any professional orchestra will know. In contrast, the music of August Enna is a completely different proposition but I am delighted to report that the orchestra plays with complete security, skill and musical sensitivity presenting both scores in the best imaginable light. In the concerto they are joined by the Danish-Ukrainian violinist Anna Agafia. I had not heard her playing before but, to be blunt, she plays with so much more finesse and subtlety than Laursen that the work emerges as a quite different and engaging work. A major aspect of the success is her chosen playing style. Agafia’s website is not very forthcoming about who she trained with although the site for the Singapore Violin Competition, from which you can stream an impressive Beethoven Violin Concerto, mentions her obtaining her “Soloist Bachelor and Master’s degrees at the Haute École de Musique de Lausanne”. The result – here at least – is a light very precise tone supported by an focused vibrato, with brilliantly articulated and clear playing allied to a very secure technique. Agafia’s willingness to float a true pp is effective and very attractive and again suits the mood of the music very well.
This seems absolutely ideal for the Enna concerto which emphasises clean lyrical lines with soloist and orchestra in collaboration rather than a warhorse virtuoso display that some concerti exploit. Imagine a technique perfectly suited to the Mendelssohn concerto and you will get an idea of the skill on display here. Indeed, mentioning Mendelssohn gives some idea of the musical/expressive landscape that Enna deploys. Although Danish-born, Enna’s heritage was Italian which possibly explains his natural predilection for melodies with a vocal shape. Given the 1896 date of composition, this is a very conservative work – the Mendelssohn was written nearly sixty years earlier and the Sibelius was just eight years in the future. Even the Bruch is three decades earlier. Best to enjoy the work on its own merits of attractive uncluttered writing, fresh and individual melodies rather than fixate too much of it place in the pantheon of greatness.
To that end, all the performers here play the music with a directness and unaffected charm that suits the emotional scale of the work very well. No real surprise that Enna has written a work in the standard three movement moderate/slow/quick format that runs to 29:54 in this performance. The real curiosity is the central Andante. After the enjoyable but hardly dramatic opening movement Moderato this opens with an orchestral gesture that seems to portend something altogether more serious. In fact that proves not to be the case but the curiosity is that this gesture seems to be an explicit, intentional quote from the prologue to Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. Immediately after this gesture the solo violin starts to develop the theme into an extended lyrical melody whose origins are by now far less apparent. Indeed, the music never returns to that opening and the “why” of its use is unclear. The closing Allegro scherzando is both the shortest and least impressive part of the work. Enna aims for a brilliant closing display movement but somehow it never quite takes wing and ends in a very predictable if virtuosic manner. Not that the performance here can be faulted in any way.
Likewise the engineering is very good indeed with Agafia’s precise and beautiful playing ideally balanced just in front of the orchestra. For the avoidance of any doubt, the quality of the orchestral accompaniment and indeed Gustafsson’s (a soloist standard violinist in his own right) attentive and flexible support of Agafia is top drawer regardless of the fact that the performers here might not be as internationally well-known as some.
The orchestra takes centre stage in the Symphony No.2 in E major. Enna’s symphony No.1 is lost but had impressed that doyen of Scandinavian composer/teachers Niels Gade. By the time Enna composed his next symphony in 1907 his status as an international composer of opera was well established. The liner suggests that he wrote this work to prove his stature as a composer of absolute music. Given his natural conservative bent, no real surprise that this work ticks all the boxes of symphonic conformity; four movements of fairly standard contrasting character, the use of recurring melodic motifs to give the work symphonic unity, attractive but far from radical orchestration to name but a few features. More of a surprise, given Enna’s reputation for a fiery temper and combative nature, is just what a good-natured and essentially sunny work this is. In his homeland his music was criticised for being “too European” but while there is a complete absence of any nationalist melodic shapes or harmony, he does manage to write melodies that are light and airy and genuinely attractive. At the same time this is not a symphony that apes the ideals of so many similar Austro-Germanic works.
The scoring of the work is pretty standard with the exception of a pair of harps. These can be heard occasionally in this performance but their presence seems somewhat underused. Part of the issue is that Enna does score rather thickly. A lot of the time the primary melodic material is led by the strings – with some wind doubling. Alongside this Enna is very adept at writing countermelodies and warm supporting harmonies across all sections of the orchestra. The result is lush and glowing but occasionally opaque. The third movement Allegretto scherzando strikes me as the most successful from an orchestrational point of view as well as having some nice touches of harmony and melodic shape. The finale, rather than conforming to a festive or dance-like conclusion, is rather more ceremonial albeit in an affirmatory manner. The very opening of this movement is impressive too with a descending unfurling string figure followed by a noble harp-accompanied rising phrase. This is crowned by a quite attractive brass-led statement around which recollections of themes and motifs from earlier in the work gather.
All in all this is an enjoyable work but by the highest measure it does lack the individuality to command enduring attention. The liner rightly describes it as “easily comprehensible and immediately effective” but also points out that after its 1908 premiere it received few further performances. From the standpoint of over a century later Enna’s essential conservatism or lack of national musical identity seems less important. Certainly in performances like this both works receive a platform where they can be re-evaluated and appreciated for what they are, not dismissed for what they are not.
Another fine Dacapo disc, well-engineered and very well played by soloist and orchestra alike. My tiniest quibble is the choice of a colour scheme for the cover/booklet which feels more like a test for colour-blindness rather than anything even faintly legible!
Nick Barnard
Previous reviews: Jonathan Woolf (September 2023) ~ Jim Westhead (October 2023)
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