Reunion in Bucharest

In Bucharest a famed master and a famed pupil played together for the first time in six years. In those years the pupil had won greater fame, and the master had lived in obscurity. The pupil was Violinist Yehudi Menuhin. The master had been a prodigy too: Georges Enesco, son of a Rumanian peasant, became a highly talented composer, violinist, pianist, conductor and musical scholar. Enesco had almost dropped from sight after his country went Fascist.

To reunite master and pupil, the Rumanian Government flew Menuhin, his wife and two children, from Zurich in a special plane. In a Bucharest movie house Enesco, now 64 and bent with arthritis, played piano to Yehudi's fiddle, and conducted the Rumanian Philharmonic Orchestra. In eight days they played seven concerts, one of them for Rumania's King Michael and his aunt, Princess Elisabeth. Guards with Tommy guns stood at the doors, to protect Government officials in the audience. During the concert, janitors swept the floors, poking with their brooms beneath the feet of annoyed listeners. A huge U.S. flag hung behind Menuhin on stage, the first time it has been centrally displayed in Rumania since the war.

The crowd cheered everything indiscriminately, and wept over Enesco's own stormy Sonata No. 3 in A Minor. For Menuhin and Enesco the concerts were warmups. They plan to play together in the U.S. next fall.

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