Enna Concerto pour violon - Ouverture Cleopatra - Fantaisie Symphonique Rabus Bäumer

Musicien danois d’ascendance italienne d’où son nom, August Enna était un autodidacte qui se fit connaître dans son pays par une abondante production d’opéras, dont certains figurent encore au répertoire. Il a en particulier mis en musique les contes d’Andersen comme la petite fille aux allumettes (CPO 999 595-2). L’ouverture de Cléopatra (1893) montre qu’Enna avait bien écouté Wagner et Verdi avant de se lancer. Son concerto pour violon (1897) vaut plus par une imagination mélodique riche et facile que par une quelconque recherche de structure. Il est au demeurant superbement défendue par Kathrin Rabus, premier violon solo de la NDR philharmonie, soucieuse de mettre en évidence cette écriture flatteuse. Quant à l’ambitieuse et tardive Fantaisie Symphonique (1931), elle révèle qu’Enna n’était pas resté insensible à l’écriture de Sibelius. Pour sentir des sentiers battus et découvrir un musicien jusque là méconnu en dehors de son pays natal, dans des conditions comme toujours chez CPO d’une irréprochable qualité. (Richard Wander)

After Heksen (The Witch), August Enna’s greatest and most successful opera, his next magnificent stage work followed already in 1893 with the opera Kleopatra (Cleopatra) to a text supplied by the Danish author Einar Christiansen. The work is based on Henry Rider Haggard’s novel of the same name, which had been published a few years prior to this date. The overture introducing the opera is a highly effective piece in which the languishing main theme is presented in unison in the strings and then goes over into tender woodwind tones. Enna’s other works have not been as widely disseminated as his operas. His Violin Concerto from 1897 was one of his more successful instrumental works; here he stands with one foot in Nordic music and with the other in the Italian opera. Influences from his mentors Johan Svendsen and P. E. Lange-Müller are in evidence in the first and last movements. It is in the second movement, however, that we encounter the work’s greatest surprise: it is introduced by beginning of the famous aria »Vesti la giubba« from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci! Enna develops the theme into a highly expressive cantilena, and after an intermediary segment in major it makes its return toward the end of the movement. In his Symphonic Fantasy from 1930-31, a work that has gone as good as unnoticed, what above all stands out is Enna’s talent for instrumentation, a talent virtually unrivaled in the Danish music of his times.