The year 1940 was comparatively quiet for Enescu. Romania had not yet entered the Second World War, and his schedule of concerts was not as intense as had been the case in the First World War, which gave him time to complete two major compositions, the
Impressions d'enfance for violin and piano, and the Piano Quintet. The manuscript of the Quintet indicates that the first pair of movements was completed at Enescu's villa Luminiș in Sinaia on 24 September 1940, but the remaining pair of movements is undated, and Enescu continued making small revisions as late as 1949. The score is dedicated to the memory of the pianist (and Enescu's early patron) Princess Elena Bibescu. The work was not performed in Enescu's lifetime, but was finally premiered in Bucharest in 1964 by (amongst others) Valentin Gheorghiu, piano, and Ștefan Gheorghiu, first violin (Malcolm 1990, 213, 222–23, 244, 276).
The Quintet is in four movements, grouped in two "commanding musical blocks" of two movements each (Bentoiu 2010, 417):
The overriding feature of the cyclic melodic material that contributes to unifying all of the movements of this Quintet is the constant presence of a "modal fifth": a formula that fits each of the motives within the framework of a perfect fifth, thus establishing an underlying pentachordal modal torso. Put another way, the displayed motives may be regarded as various kinds of melodic "disguisings" of the modal fifth over the course of the Quintet (Firca and Niculescu 1971, 980).
Chronologically, by date of recording.
