‘In this work,’ said Paweł Mykietyn about Concerto No. 2, ‘I tried to synthesize my research related to time in music. Of course, I also tried to make it communicative. I wanted to pour some strong human emotion into this strict mathematical structure.’ Judging by the reaction of the Warsaw audience gathered on 29 March 2019 at the Witold Lutosławski Concert Studio, the composer fully achieved his goal. Or maybe even with a surplus, as the attending actor and director Maciej Stuhr, while listening to Marcin Zdunik and the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra led by the Polish-Lebanese conductor Bassem Akiki, ‘saw’ a silent film etude (later entitled simply: Cello Concerto No. 2). Stuhr transferred his vision in a precise way, adhering in every second to the Warsaw concert recording, and created a completely new artistic form, a kind of ‘film in the spirit of music’.
Given the opportunity to listen multiple times to the studio recording of Cello Concerto No. 2 – with Marcin Zdunik and the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic under the baton of Bassem Akiki – the following important question is worth answering: is this totally captivating piece by Paweł Mykietyn a masterpiece comparable to Witold Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto? (...)
The Hommage is the second, after the Flute Concerto from 2013, work of large size by Mykietyn, in which – thanks to precise mathematical calculations – he explores the dramatic possibilities of creating an illusion of stretching or shortening time by music. The orchestra is relatively economical in this piece: except for a single oboe, wind instruments (flutes, clarinets, horns, trumpets and trombones) have been limited to only a double, classical line-up. In addition, the composer uses interchangeably celesta or piano, a percussion section and 28 strings, often treated as solo instruments.
The composition consists of three movements played attacca.
Marcin Gmys

ACD 281 - Track 01 - Mykietyn - Cello Concerto No  2

Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Polish: Wajnberg) wrote his first string quartet in May 1937.
(...)In the summer of 1941, Weinberg was forced to flee for a second time. On this occasion, he made his way to Tashkent, to where members of the Leningrad Conservatory were also evacuated in the autumn. In December, he had an opportunity to hear his String Quartet No. 2, Op. 3 performed by these exiled musicians. Afterwards, the work probably ended up in a drawer and was shown only to composer-friends, which would explain the similarity between this piece and certain episodes from Dmitri Shostakovich’s String Quartets Nos. 2 and 6, written at a later period when both composers maintained close contact. Forty-five years later, Weinberg returned to the material of his youth. Using the experience he had gained over the past decades, he made certain alterations. He changed very little in the first two movements: he made a few abbreviations, developed certain themes in a slightly different way, and added variety to others by complementing existing parts with new ones; sometimes he also changed the articulation or register. He then added a new movement in the form of a short delicate intermezzo (largely through playing con sordino and the abundance of rests between the short motifs). Relatively speaking, he made the most changes to the existing finale. And it is this new version of String Quartet No. 2, this time assigned opus number 145, that the Silesian Quartet performs on this disc.
(...)
At the end of September 1943, the fugitive from Warsaw settled in Moscow. It was not his first stay in Moscow, as he had been there earlier, in 1940, as a delegate from Minsk for an event called the Decade of Belarusian Art. It was there that he met Nikolai Myaskovsky, regarded as a leading figure in the Moscow composer community, and on his return to Moscow he naturally immediately renewed that acquaintance. Soon, he also found himself in frequent contact with Shostakovich, who had moved permanently to Moscow a few months earlier (Leningrad was still under siege). Weinberg was admitted to the Composers’ Union, which was a very important step, as it opened up opportunities for performing and publishing his new works. In February 1944, he began work on his first “Moscow” piece, String Quartet No. 3, Op. 14. At the time, this was a popular genre among Soviet composers – string quartets were being penned both by older composers, including Myaskovsky, and members of the younger generation, such as Yuri Levitin, a friend of Weinberg. These new scores quickly found willing performers among the many excellent musicians based in Moscow at the time.
(...)
The Bolshoi Theatre Quartet performed String Quartet No. 4, which was dedicated to the ensemble, on 19 January 1946. In 1959, the work appeared in print as Weinberg’s first published quartet, and four years later it was discussed by Lev Raaben in a monograph on Soviet chamber music. In keeping with the trend of the time, what he primarily heard in the piece were the echoes of war. The two opening movements were intended to reflect the enemy invasion and a heroic mood. The funeral march in the third movement seemed obvious given the programme of the work, and the finale was interpreted by Raabe as a reminiscence of a carefree childhood, although most listeners tend to associate it with the beginning of Mendelssohn’s Octet; we do not know whether this was deliberate or accidental. Twelve years later, Ludmila Nikitina interpreted the Quartet differently. Above all else, she was struck by the echoes of Jewish music recognisable in the second movement. Her sensitive ear proved to be closer to the composer’s own intentions, as years later Weinberg used this very movement in his Symphony No. 21, dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto, entitled Kaddish, which means a prayer for the dead.
Danuta Gwizdalanka

ACD 291 Track10 Wajnberg String Quartet No  4 Op  20 - III  Largo Marciale

ACD 329 - Track 02 - Mozart - Violin Concerto No. 1 In B - Flat Major, KV 207 Mov2

First shown in January 1984, Mr Kleks' Academy, directed by Krzysztof Gradowski, and its sequels have gained the status of cult films for many people who grew up in the gloomy 1980s and immediately after the political transformation. (...)
The idea of enriching the film with songs significantly influenced the decision to create this motion picture. lts authors wove Jan Brzechwa's famous poems into his novel, creating something like a fairy-tale universe (same of the texts were written by Gradowski). The musical pieces are an integral and key part of the entire trilogy. Their first performers were members of the Boys' Choir of the 'Lutnia' Singing Society in Wieliczka, Piotr Fronczewski, who played the title character, and numerous stars of the Polish stage. Andrzej Korzyński, a composer who already boasted considerable achievements as an author of songs, film music and entertaining electronic music (Arp Life band), was responsible for composing and, as importantly, arranging the songs. (...) 
Like books and fairy tałes, escape to the world of dreams was made possible by innovative sound experiences. Today they are not as impressive, but the pioneering electronics in Korzyński's songs is the first association of Michał Ziółkowski, the author of the choral and orchestra! arrangements recorded on this album, with the film.

For the composer, who belongs to the generation of Mr Kleks' 'pupils', the songs recorded on this album and arranged in the form of a suite are a kind of orchestral fantasy, into which well-known melodies sung by a children's choir and an 'adult' mixed choir are only woven. This is true – Ziółkowski uses a large orchestra, treating it as a vast, multicoloured treasury of various sounds. So much trouble to remind children's songs? The orchestral setting may seem superfluous and while listening it is easy to glide over the melodies of the songs you have heard. But how many details, colourful minutiae, carefully hidden little things that only a curious child can find! lt is as if we were looking at the melodies through all the colourful stained glass windows that decorated the palace in Nieborów being the scenery of the Academy for the film.
The fairy-tale materiał of this album is the result of collaboration between Michał Ziółkowski, the Wrocław choir mistress Małgorzata Podzielny and the choirs she leads. On the album we can hear the Girls' and Boys' Choirs of the National Forum of Music and the Rondo Vocal Ensemble (bringing together the graduates of the Grażyna Bacewicz Primary Music School in Wrocław, or mare precisely, graduates of another choir – Con Brio). The decorative orchestral tapestry is the work of the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. Although Ziółkowski first prepared two of the recorded songs in 2014, the most important part of the materiał was premiered during the 'Musical Fairy Tales' concert at the Leo Festival in 2021. The remaining songs were performed on the album for the first time.
Szymon Atys (transl. Anna Marks)

ACD 327 - Track 05 - Kaczka Dziwaczka

ACD 327 - Track 03 - Na Wyspach Bergamutach

Six composers – seven quintets – four pianists – one quartet. The latest double-CD album of the Silesian Quartet contains compositions by Aleksander Lasoń, Krzysztof Meyer, Zbigniew Bargielski, Bettina Skrzypczak and Bartosz Witkowski. The quartet is accompanied by pianists: Eugeniusz Knapik, Piotr Sałajczyk, Zygmunt Krazue and Tymoteusz Bies.

ACD 332 - CD1 - Track 05 - Meyer - Piano Quintet Op. 76 - Inquieto

ACD 332 - CD1 - Track 01 - Lason - Chamber Music No. 1

It is my profound belief that one can discover meaning in life by reflecting on death and the evanescence of our existence. It is only by contemplating death and accepting it that we may find peace of spirit and mind. Such contemplation makes it possible to view death in a different light, to find deeper sense in it, and prepare for its coming. The transition to another dimension, that of eternal life, is a stage that comes as natural to every Christian.
This is why my own musical statement about the dead is contemplative in mood, full of hope, optimism, and love.
In my Requiem, I have consciously omitted the section known as Dies irae. As its title (‘Day of Wrath’) suggests, this sequence is filled with pain and suffering that accompany a bloody, apocalyptic vision of the Last Judgment. My Kyrie eleison, on the other hand, has been constructed rather untypically (following consultation with a theologian), namely – in the manner of a joyful greeting addressed to the Risen Christ, the victorious King, to whom
we offer our thanks and whom we glorify for the reconciliation that he brought about. It is thus conceived as a triumphant acclamation, as homage and adoration, the way it functioned in the original liturgy, though in our present-day tradition this call is normally understood as a grave and sorrowful supplication for mercy rather than an act of adoration.

Krzysztof Herdzin
Translation: Tomasz Zymer

ACD 333 - Track 09 - Herdzin - Requiem - In Paradisum 44k - 16b

ACD 333 - Track 01 - Herdzin - Requiem - Introitus 44k - 16b

‘I and God... ’
An orchestral debut, one of numerous song cycles and finally a short yet massive vocalinstrumental work. Years spanning their dates of inception: twelve. Significantly greater span – between the dates of their premieres, interspersed by greater and lesser historical events, most notably the First World War and both Russian revolutions, along with a series of personal trials and reappraisals of the artist’s spirituality, as well as bad luck and
unfavourable circumstances.
What – apart from the author – links these works? Seemingly very little, yet certain common threads can be found. Among them that each of the three works is linked to a degree with some kind of specific literary text. ‘Some kind of’ that is to say different in each instance. Songs of a Fairy Princess is a clear example of a ‘musical setting’.
Symphony No. 3 subtitled ‘The Song of the Night’, has at its core the text of a Persian mystic, yet is fundamentally an instrumental work capable of being performed without voices. 
What about the Overture? In keeping with the spirit – or manner – of the era, the first version of the work was preceded by a poetic motto from the poem Witeź Włast by Tadeusz Miciński (1873–1918), a close friend of the composer, a cult figure in today’s slang and in yesterday’s stricter definition, a type of ‘magus’, and one of the leaders of Polish modernism at the turn of the 20th century. In the climactic point of his verse Miciński wrote about ‘the proud and brutal triumph’ of his hero, not quite the legitimate descendant of a Nietzschean superman. Later – like in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 – the motto disappeared. Perhaps just as well. Triumph? Undoubtedly, even infused with pride, however bloody sacrificial stones or any brutality are nowhere to be found in the sunlit E major of the Overture.

Rafał Augustyn
(transl. by Anna Kaspszyk)

ACD 315 - Track 10 - Szymanowski - Symphony No. 3 ‘The Song Of The Night’, Op. 27

ACD 315 - Track 05 - Szymanowski - Songs Of A Fairy Princess, Op. 31 - Dance

ACD 315 - Track 01 - Szymanowski - Concert Overture In E Major, Op. 12

ACD331 - Track 06 - Lukaszewski - Missa Sancti Papae Ioannis Pauli Secundi Magni - Sanctus

ACD331 - Track 01 - Lukaszewski - Terra Nova Et Caelum Novum

ACD 331 - Track 11 - Lukaszewski - Corpus Christi Responsoria - Homo Quidam

Most of us, when contemplating medieval representations of danse macabre, in which Death leads people of all walks of life, do not pay attention to the sound aspect of the allegory. Yet it is very important – where there is dancing, there must also be music.
In the oldest depictions, dating back to the end of the Middle Ages, it is Death that plays an instrument. Interestingly, it is a wind instrument, such as a flute or bagpipes, or a percussion instrument. In the Middle Ages, such instruments were associated with the devil (the violin is a quite modern attribute in this context). Knowledge of this association has allowed art historians to understand the genealogy of the popular motif. The similarity of the contemporary images of death and the devil (whose domain included such bodily activities as dancing) explains the didactic function of the famous allegory, which appeared in Europe after the plague epidemic in the 14th century.
In the context of numerous painted representations and literary texts of this period, the collection of old musical records referring to the dance of death is relatively modest. Nineteenth-century works such as Totentanz by Ferenc Liszt and Danse macabre by Camille Saint-Saëns have little in common with the classical shape of allegory. Only the times of modernism and the development of historical art sciences meant that composers, exploring old techniques, directly referred to preserved medieval representations. The composers’ imagination was most influenced by paintings from Basel and Lübeck. The Swiss Totentanz inspired Arthur Honegger (La danse des morts) and Frank Martin (Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943), while Hugo Distler paid tribute to the north German one in his work Totentanz, Op. 12 No. 2. (...)
In the well-known motet Warum ist das Licht gegeben dem Mühseligen, Op. 74 No. 1 by Johannes Brahms from 1877, the issue of the continuity of German culture plays an important role. The composer used the music of his unfinished youth project Missa canonica (in which he explored Renaissance contrapuntal techniques) to pose fundamental existential questions. Brahms left some clues on how to interpret this compelling piece. He pointed out, among other things, that it was related to his melancholic disposition. Taking up the genre of a religious motet is interesting because the composer, baptised in the Protestant church, often ironised about religion, and his worldview can best be described as humanistic. (...)
O Tod, wie bitter bist du from Geistliche Gesänge, Op. 110 is Reger’s voice in final matters. The composition is believed to have been created in just five hours in 1912 and was dedicated to the recently deceased youngest daughter of another Leipzig master, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The text of the motet comes from the Ecclesiasticus, and its spirit teaches the same difficult moral as the dance of death and asks the same questions as Brahms’ Job. Reger, though, highlights the contrast between a human who prospers and a human facing death in a different way. In one of his letters he wrote about this work: ‘it will be a terribly sad work, ending with a transformation – that is: Death is the end that transforms.’ (...)
There is one more piece on this album – Sarabande from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita in A minor for solo flute, BWV 1013. It will sound like the lament of Death itself on the ruins of the Lübeck church. For 19th-century German culture, Bach was both the ideal of a romantic artist and at the same time a religious craftsman. The culture founded on similar contradictions gave birth to masterpieces of musical literature, but also to the criminal ideology of Nazism. Each of the above-mentioned composers wanted to equal Bach, and it was Bach who was perceived as a proof of the German people’s superiority. Yet, like them, he was just another human in Death’s procession. 

Szymon Atys
Translated by Anna Marks

ACD335 - Track17 - Reger - O Tod

ACD335 - Track16 - Bach - Sarabande

ACD335 - Track03 - Distler - Totentanz

ACD335 - Track01 - Brahms - Warum

Not merely the atmosphere, but also the various references suggest that Weinberg’s music – including his String Quartets Nos. 8, 9 and 10 – comes from the mind of someone who suffered because of the tragic fate of his family and missed the lost homeland where he had spent “the best and happiest years” of his life, as he confessed many years later to an interlocutor from Poland. 
	These three works – Opp. 66, 80 and 85 – were composed in a period when he lived off memories, which is also evident in his choice of texts for his vocal works. His Symphony No. 6 Op. 79 sets Jewish and Russian poems about the war, while in The Diary of Love Op. 87 he uses texts by Stanisław Wygodzki which lament the death of the poet’s daughter in Auschwitz. His Symphony No. 8 “Polish Flowers” Op. 83 was inspired by Julian Tuwim’s long narrative poem expressing his longing for the lost fatherland. In that period, the composer was also waiting – as noted above – for the libretto of The Passenger, whose protagonists he may well have identified with members of his own family.
	No wonder then that all the quartets on this CD are composed in minor keys: those of C minor (The Eighth), F-sharp minor (The Ninth) and A minor (The Tenth). The slow movements are the longest and the most momentous. A melancholy lamentation opens the String Quartet No. 8, returns in the central episode and ends the cycle. In the Quartet No. 9 it stretches over all of movement three, assuming a distinctly dramatic tone. In the Quartet No. 10 it makes its appearance as the opening Adagio and later as the third, penultimate section.

ACD 241 - Track 01 - Weinberg - String Quartet No  8

The latest CD of the National Forum of Music and CD Accord features Phantoms – a cantata by Stanisław Moniuszko according to Part II of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve. The recording produced by prominent singers – among others Jarosław Bręk, Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk and Jerzy Butryn, as well as actors, the NFM Choir and Wrocław Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Andrzej Kosendiak – is the first in the original version, cleared of subsequent editorial changes. The album, which is the world premiere of the recording, is a rarity on the publishing market. The reconstruction of the score was made by Maciej Prochaska, whose commentary was included in the booklet for the album. The CD materials include an essay by Grzegorz Zieziula, who specialises in the history and theory of 19th-century music and works at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
‘Stanisław Moniuszko (1819–1872) is today best known as “the father of Polish opera” and the author of Songbook for Home Usepublished with a wide range of audiences in mind. However, he was also a creator of cantatas, in which unlike any other Polish composer, he knew how to combine the typically operatic element of drama with characteristic lyricism and the meditative aura of songs. His cantatas are large-scale, multi movement vocal-instrumental works, containing certain traits of both genres. Like his ’Lithuanian’ cantatas to texts by Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, written at the turn of the 1840s or his ’Petersburg’ Madonna inspired by Petrarch's Sonnets, his later Mickiewicz-inspired Phantoms and Crimean Sonnets have seldom been recorded. Consequently they remain little known to Polish music-lovers. […]
The authors of this recording aspired to restore the score to its original version, as closely related as possible to the composer's intentions, which of course required purging the work of all later corrections, ‘improvements’ and editorial changes made in the first place, shortly after the composer's death by his good friend and colleague, Adam Münchheimer (1830–1904). Neither was Władysław Żeleński – so often critical of Moniuszko – able to resist a temptation of interfering in the work. The difficult task of the present reconstruction was undertaken by Maciej Prochaska […]. 
The Wrocław initiative of a gradual availability on disc of Moniuszko's entire cantata output will give music-lovers a unique opportunity of making some startling discoveries. Admittedly one cannot help feeling that a quest for accomplished musical adaptations of known and less known literary works by leading Polish 19th century writers and poets, brings far greater satisfaction to historians and Polish language scholars fascinated by native culture, than to music critics. The latter, being forever disgruntled with Moniuszko for failing to follow in Chopin's footsteps and creating masterpieces of a universal scale. One might ask why such expressions of disapproval are not directed at any of the men of letters valued by Moniuszko: at Fredro, at  Polish Romantic bards or the earlier mentioned Kraszewski. In their works we are drawn to that which is forever local and familiar, to something that helps us discover new truths about ourselves, our common past and present. 
Moniuszko undoubtedly belongs to the same category of creative artists. To paraphrase the highly perceptive thoughts of Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, one could say that the glaring disproportion between the splendid heritage left by Moniuszko and the power of its outward diffusion is just one of the many instances testifying to our ‘lordly parochial’ culture. Like in the case of Fredro, Mickiewicz or Kraszewski, we have him all to ourselves. And only to ourselves.’

ACD 243 - Track 21 - Moniuszko - Widma - Phantoms

ACD 243 - Track 07 - Moniuszko - Widma - Phantoms

The concert repertoire can be viewed as an ocean into which two distinct rivers flow. One carries music works inspired first and foremost by emotions. The ancient Greeks believed that music was born out of despair; the cries of Medusa in the face of imminent death inspired Athene to play moving tunes on her aulos. In most cases, it is the feeling of nostalgia, sadness, even the aforementioned despair (such as that which results from the sense of the tragic) that provides impulses for music composition. Wajnberg’s string quartets presented on this CD clearly belong to this emotional current in music – especially the Eleventh and the Thirteenth. But ancient Greeks also told the story of Hermes finding the shell of a dried tortoise with a few tense sinews still left. When plucked, they produced sounds, which inspired the god to build a lyre. Here we come to the second river of repertoire – pieces of music born out of curiosity. This river swelled to great heights in the 20th century, when many artists sought new means of expression. Some innovative solutions can be found in Wajnberg’s two quarters from his later period, particularly in the Twelfth.

Mieczysław Wajnberg’s imposing output of compositions includes 17 quartets, 22 symphonies, 9 concertos, 7 cantatas, more than 50 pieces of chamber music for various instrumental complements, as well as nearly 30 song cycles and 8 operas. Composing was 

In the autumn of 1939 and again in the summer of 1941 he nearly miraculously escaped death by fleeing the Germans, first from Warsaw, later from Minsk. Once in the Soviet Union, in early 1953 he fell victim to anti-Semitic purges and was only released from prison after Stalin’s death. His closest family were murdered in an extermination camp, which was a trauma he had to live with till the very end. He recalled his lost fatherland, the country where he had spent his first 20 years, with nostalgia, confessing to one Pole in a conversation that the Warsaw days had been the “best and happiest” period of his life – a statement worth remembering in the context of many of his works.

Danuta Gwizdalanka

ACD 250 - Track05 - Wajnberg - String Quartet No  12 Op  103 Mov 1 Largo

ACD 250 - Track01 - Wajnberg - String Quartet No  11 In F Major Op  89 Mov  1 Allegro Assai

The work was composed in 1996 for the city’s three thousandth anniversary and in formal terms, is a sevenmovement work based on psalms and selected passages from four books of the Old Testament. It was premiered in January 1997 in Jerusalem and the third performance was done for the purposes of the present recording. With this work Krzysztof Penderecki continues a course set by his earlier monumental oratorios: The Passion According to St Luke (1965), Matins (1970), the Polish Requiem (1984) as well as the Canticum Canticorum Salomonis? a 1973 chamber work, though in musical terms it obviously bears a much closer relation to recent pieces.

The potential of the imposing cast consisting of five solo singers, a reciter, as well as three choirs and an orchestra with a very expanded percussion section, are used to full advantage producing a sound at once monumental and organic. Splendor and dignity are the qualities apparent upon a first encounter with this work.

Jerusalem – the holy city of some of the world’s major religions, is a symbol of endurance, the power of rebirth and the creative faculty but also a place of decline, conflict and danger. So it is described in the Bible and thus we see it today – as if time were irrelevant in the face of the basic qualities of the city’s inhabitants, unchanged since the loss of original innocence. In this amalgam of religious elevation and hatred, the noble love of ideals and destitution, nobility and helplessness in the struggle against evil, and the sense of human community becomes tangible and unavoidable like destiny itself. Consigned to frailty, humanity can only find solace in faith which helps rebuild what had been destroyed in the fall. Yet even faith when blindly pursued, can be conducive to destruction. It is therefore not enough to believe, one must also love – such is the lesson the fate of Jerusalem teaches us a lesson Krzysztof Penderecki made the substance of his work.
Grzegorz Michalski

ACD069 - Track06 - Penderecki - Seven Gates Of Jerusalem - Mov 6

ACD069 - Track04 - Penderecki - Seven Gates Of Jerusalem - Mov 4

ACD069 - Track01 - Penderecki - Seven Gates Of Jerusalem - Mov 1

The album is a recording of a concert (8 March 2002) with which Antoni Wit began his management of the National Philharmonic. The programme included pieces by Lutosławski, Meyer and Penderecki. This is the first release of Concerto grosso composed by Penderecki in 2000 and it is likely to inspire the most interest. This composition for three cellos and orchestra juxtaposes the elements of an instrumental concert with symphonic impetuosity. Seriousness and tragedy clash here with the grotesque. The work stands out against the recent European output as one with a superb dramatic action, richness of moods, and depth of expression. It will also sound friendly to those allergic to avant-garde experiments. Antoni Wit shows full control of the score while conducting his orchestra with real verve. But then he has excellent partners – the cellists Ivan Monighetti, Adam Klocek and Kazimierz Koślacz. The first part of the album consists of two works. Lutosławski's subtle and mysterious Mi-parti for orchestra is regarded by many as a masterpiece. And Krzysztof Meyer in his Mass for a mixed choir and orchestra tries to set a liturgical Latin text to music. The sound and the atmosphere are deliberately austere and the choir of the Philharmonic has proved equal to the task. 
Bartosz Kamiński. Gazeta Wyborcza, 27 Sept. 2002

ACD096 - Track01 - Lutoslawski - Mi - Parti

"I have absolutely never had a feeling of rejecting anything. I may sound megalomaniac, but I always thought I was writing my music being fully conscious that it was in a way bound up with the past." (Conversations with Wojciech Kilar, published by PWM Krakow 1997).

ACD120 - Track02 - Kilar - Piano Concerto (1997) Mov 1

The cycle of six Sonatas for solo violin Op. 27 is one of Eugène Ysaÿe’s greatest accomplishments in the field of composition. The impulse for writing this cycle – unprecedented in many ways – came from the Bach recital of a young Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti. In a relatively short period in July 1923, during his stay on the Belgian coast, Ysaÿe completed his sonatas and dedicated each of them to a different young violin virtuoso. Opus 27 (which directly drew on the idea of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin) was a great homage to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, presented, naturally, in the modern language of 20th-century music. The violin technique explores the technical limits of this instrument. Tonal and harmonic invention, liberated from the limitations of the major-minor system, delights with originality and unconventional approach, and the form (in one to four parts) brings to mind the free domain of improvisation. All those aspects combine into an organic whole which renders his Sonatas Op. 27 totally unique and makes each of them individually recognisable right from the very first bar.

Even more importantly, the composer does not repeat any of the models used in the individual Sonatas. Possibly this approach resulted from his idea of dedicating the pieces to musicians who represented highly individual qualities, or, in other words, of creating a distinct portrait for each of those six violinists. What unites these six pieces into a whole becomes, on a higher level, a grand self-portrait of their author. It was also in this way that Joseph Szigeti interpreted the Sonatas Op. 27 – as an attempt at recording the “elusive performance style” of Eugène Ysaÿe himself. In comparison with his other compositions, the Sonatas genuinely represent his extraordinary imagination and visionary way of thinking about violin play.
 
Marcin Majchrowski
(The Polish Radio)
Translation: Tomasz Zymer

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