They exhibit exotic modal coloring, with some scales having 'mobile' thirds, sixths or sevenths, creating a shifting major/minor atmosphere, one of the characteristics of Romanian music.

The composer conducted all three of his own works, which were preceded on the programme by Berlioz's Overture to Les francs-juges and Schumann's Symphony No.

1 in A major is dedicated to the composer and pedagogue Bernard Crocé-Spinelli [de] (a fellow student with Enescu in André Gedalge's counterpoint class at the Conservatoire),[6] and is the better known of the two rhapsodies.

[1][5] Enescu claimed that it was "just a few tunes thrown together without thinking about it", but his surviving sketches show that he carefully worked out the order in which the melodies should appear, and the best instrumental setting for each one.

[7] According to the published score, the instrumentation is: 3 flutes (3rd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets in C, 2 cornets in A, 3 trombones, tuba, 3 timpani, triangle, snare drum, cymbals, 2 harps, violins I & II, violas, violoncellos, contrabasses.

As the work progresses, this tune grows faster and livelier to climax in a vibrant whirling folk dance,[10] which quotes heavily from the melody from "Ciocârlia" ("The skylark"), a folk tune allegedly composed by the Romani composer Angheluș Dinicu.

[4][12] The concert was billed as a commemoration of his 60th year as an artist, and in it he appeared as violinist together with Yehudi Menuhin in Bach's Concerto for Two Violins, as pianist in his own Sonata No.

For all their popularity, the two Romanian Rhapsodies proved to be "an albatross round Enescu's neck: later in his life he bitterly resented the way they had dominated and narrowed his reputation as a composer".