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NOSPR / Alsop / Sumino / Inauguration of the season 2024/2025

We invite you to a live broadcast of the concert on Polish Radio 2.Samuel Barber began composing the Symphony No. 1 in1935, at the age of twenty-five. At the end of 1942 and at the beginning of 1943, he made significant amendments to the score, eventually to dedicate it to Gian Carlo Menotti – his university friend and later life partner. Commenting on this symphonic debut, he admitted that the intention behind it was a polemical dialogue with the classical... Read full text

Keywords: Subscription Concert, Symphony Concert

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Musicians

Marin AlsopConductor
NOSPR
Hayato SuminoPiano

Program

Symphony No. 1, Op. 9Samuel Barber
Concertino for piano and orchestraWładysław Szpilman
Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56aJohannes Brahms
Rhapsody in BlueGeorge Gershwin
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Last update: Fri, Nov 22, 2024, 12:16

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NOSPR / Alsop / Season finale. A Titan

Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR
It is rare for “first” symphonies to be created in a spontaneous rapture of inspiration. The creative process may last more than a dozen years. Sometimes it is only the “second” that becomes the “first”, and at other times it only takes its final shape after emerging from a formal ambiguity. The one to blame for all this is the author of the “Eroica”, who set the bar so high that it is difficult for his successors to get rid of the Beethovenian complex.Grażyna Bacewicz had already composed her “first” Symphony No. 1 before the war. Nonetheless, dissatisfied with the result, she “renounced” that child of hers and did not enter it into the official catalogue of works. She returned to the symphonic form in 1945, creating a four-movement neoclassical work marked by the wartime trauma. It was this symphony that she eventually gave the official number one. In spite of the fact that the work was performed by a Cracow symphony, however, she decided against publishing it.Mahler was twenty-eight years old when he finished the Symphony No. 1 and titled it Titan, thus referencing a novel by Jean Paul, a prophet of Romantic literature. Seeking a form capable of accommodating all the compositional ideas which crowded his mind, he must have experienced much more quandaries than the Polish composer did. He spent a long time adjusting the form and defining the genre for his Symphony No. 1. He hesitated between various shades and incarnations of the wide-spanning form of tone poem, alternately adding and removing the literary programme.The piece, which Mahler presented for the first time in Budapest on 20th November 1889, was introduced as A tone poem in two parts, the first part encompassing three movements of the cycle, and the second one encompassing two of them. Mahler lent them a full spectrum of emotional shades – from subjective and philosophical ones, to grotesque folklore. He initially gave each movement a programme title, only to remove those later. Thus, as a symphonist, he took the side of absolute music. After reducing the cycle to four movements, he defined his piece as Titan, a tone poem in symphonic form, in order to eventually announce, to himself and to the world, what a symphony is, and to redefine the term.Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
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NOSPR / Alsop / Yang / Polish sonorism and music of the north

Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Inmo Yang (Violin)
Although Sibelius’ Violin Concerto is not programmatic music, it is permeated by the same Northern colour and breadth of breath that can be found in nearly all works by the creator of Finlandia. This is because landscape is not present there merely as a decoration – as it was in 18th-century music – but to reflect the scenery of the soul. Part of the core violinistic repertoire, enclosed within the framework of classical form, for over a hundred years, the piece has not ceased to inspire a sense of wonder, not only with its mysterious atmosphere and richness of sound, but also with its symphonic elan and originality of themes. While the British musicologist Donald Tovey called the final movement of the Concerto a “polonaise for polar bears”, he granted it – and rightly so! – an honourable place among the greatest violin concertos of Romanticism. Another great classic of 20th-century music is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, in which – as Alex Ross put it – the Hungarian composer and folklore researcher “decided to throw away his notebook and began dancing with them [peasants]. From the strings, there rise clouds of dust, setting on the feet of the frenzied dancers.”. While the musical language of this late work of Bartok’s is a softened one, its form is classicising, and the sounds are nearly euphonic, still what is the most important for his style was retained – distinct rhythms, colourful instrumentation, and subtle inspiration drawn from folklore. Piotr MatwiejczukConcert duration: approximately 110 minutes
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Closing Concert in the 2024/2025 Season

Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 19:30
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, Krzysztof Urbański (Conductor), Sophia Brommer (Soprano), Sophie Harmsen (Mezzo-Soprano), Martin Platz (Tenor), Andrew Moore (Bass-Bariton), Bartosz Michałowski (Chorus Director)
Krzysztof Urbański, photo: Marco Borggreve Ludwig van Beethoven was regarded as a revolutionary (but also an eccentric) in his time, while for subsequent generations he became the epitome of the Classical (and, for many, of what was finest in music). The turbulent reception history of his monumental Symphony No. 9 in D minor proves that the significance of a work is never defined once and for all. It has fascinated not only musicians and listeners with different tastes, but also representatives of different political options and adherents of extreme ideologies. Along the way, it has encountered both nationalism and hope-giving universalism. Today, one of the themes of the Symphony’s finale, considered by some of Beethoven’s contemporaries to be a sign of extravagance, is one of the most recognisable melodies in Western musical culture and is known as the anthem of the European Union.
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Closing Concert in the 2024/2025 Season

Sat, Jun 14, 2025, 18:00
Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Warsaw Philharmonic Choir, Krzysztof Urbański (Conductor), Sophia Brommer (Soprano), Sophie Harmsen (Mezzo-Soprano), Martin Platz (Tenor), Andrew Moore (Bass-Bariton), Bartosz Michałowski (Chorus Director)
Krzysztof Urbański, photo: Marco Borggreve Ludwig van Beethoven was regarded as a revolutionary (but also an eccentric) in his time, while for subsequent generations he became the epitome of the Classical (and, for many, of what was finest in music). The turbulent reception history of his monumental Symphony No. 9 in D minor proves that the significance of a work is never defined once and for all. It has fascinated not only musicians and listeners with different tastes, but also representatives of different political options and adherents of extreme ideologies. Along the way, it has encountered both nationalism and hope-giving universalism. Today, one of the themes of the Symphony’s finale, considered by some of Beethoven’s contemporaries to be a sign of extravagance, is one of the most recognisable melodies in Western musical culture and is known as the anthem of the European Union.
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NOSPR / Alsop / Requiem as a tribute

Thu, Mar 27, 2025, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, NFM Choir, Erica Eloff (Soprano), Ben McAteer (Bariton), Szymon Nehring (Piano), Zuzanna Nalewajek (Alto)
“It is with greatest ease and willingness that I am working on this Concerto and, nota bene, I feel that this is going to be a first-class trick” – these words from a letter by Karol Szymanowski are proof of how important the Symphony No. 4 was for the composer. It was his unfulfilled dream of a “true” piano concerto. One of a pianistic tour de force, the first sketches of which he dropped to focus on the Stabat Mater he was working on back then. The moving „Peasant Requiem” (such was the title Szymanowski had originally intended for the work), born out of the pain he experienced after his niece’s death, it brings together religious ecstasy and a note of the Polish folklore to be heard in a recollection of the popular Bitter Lamentations resonating in the composer’s memory.How different was that world from the instrumental Chaconne by Krzysztof Penderecki! The latter is an expressive musical tribute to the memory of the late Polish Pope. It was this piece that provided a symbolic closure for the Polish Requiem, which Penderecki had been working on for a quarter of a century – a monumental chronicle of Poland’s modern history, the melancholic finale of which contains both a nostalgia for the baroque tradition and emotions of a surprisingly romantic nature.Róża ŚwiatczyńskaConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes
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NOSPR / Alsop / Lewis / Lovers’ adventures in antiquity

Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 19:30
Marin Alsop (Conductor), NOSPR, Paul Lewis (Piano)
From the precision of classical drawing to a blaze of orchestral colours. The concert begins with the Introduction and Capriccio by Grażyna Bacewicz, a post-war neoclassical diptych awarded an honourable mention at the Karol Szymanowski Competition. Later, there comes Beethoven from his Promethean period – that of searching for new routes of formal development and means of musical expression. His Piano Concerto No. 4 is already astonishing at the very beginning, with the lonely meditative piano. It is in the intimate dialogues of the middle Andante, however,that some seek the metaphysical. Romanticists found it in the character of Orpheo, begging the Furies to give his lover back to him. It is worth finding out where today’s interpretations lead us.We are bound not to be disappointed by Richard Strauss in his quasi-slapstick tale of a picaresque folk hero. After a series of bravado-filled adventures, his Till Eulenspiegel will try to dupe death once again. Will his trick work this time as well? The final feast for the senses will be served by Maurice Ravel, illustrating Longus’ idyll with the colours of pastoral love in the second one of the orchestral suites from his Daphnis and Chloé. This will be framed with what is probably the most famous picture of dawn known in the history of music and the final bacchanalia crowning the lovers’ adventures in antiquity.Róża ŚwiatczyńskaConcert duration: approximately 100 minutes
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NOSPR / Berglund / In the Hall of the Mountain King

Sun, Jun 15, 2025, 12:00
Tabita Berglund (Conductor), NOSPR
With song, he delved into the abyss, To the bottom of the world’s beginning– Kalevala, ed. Elias Lönnrot Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius are not only prominent representatives of late Romanticism, but also captivating storytellers and guides among the myths and tales of the Northern nations. In their works, legends emerging from the darkness of the past are painted with vivid colours and become filled with a modern emotionality. Slightly older of the two, Edvard Grieg, born to a family of Scottish descent in the Norwegian town of Bergen, studied in Germany and maintained contacts with numerous Danish artists. His Suite in Olden Style “From Holberg’s Time” is also one of Danish origin – the piece was commissioned to celebrate Ludvig Holberg’s, a writer dubbed “Molier of the North”, birth anniversary. The work balances between free stylistic inspiration and a tribute to Baroque forms. Nevertheless, in music written to scenes from Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, the wigged key yields to distinct emotions enchanted in the music.The first of two suites contains some of the most suggestive themes in Romanticism, with which Grieg awakens mountain monsters, trolls and kobolds within the orchestra (In the Hall of the Mountain King) and evokes Arabic and African motives, very popular at the time. (Anitra’s Dance, Morning). The Lemminkäinen Suite is a piece inspired by the Kalevala, a Finnish epic built from a compilation of folk songs of the North. Thanks to Sibelius’ imagination, the fantastical, dense and gripping poetic narrative is transformed into a nearly impressionist fresco, the death of a mythical trifler becoming just as moving as the dramatic fates of characters in Thomas Mann’s novels.Krzysztof SiwońConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes
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NOSPR / Hermus / Great symphonists and The Master-Singers of Nuremberg

Fri, Dec 6, 2024, 19:30
Antony Hermus (Conductor), NOSPR
If The Master-Singers of Nuremberg were stripped of their stage design and historical setting, they could constitute a metaphor of perfect order in the musical (though not only) world: the winner of the competition for the most beautiful song and its best performance would be the best and the most talented participant and the ambitious mediocre one would suffer a well-deserved defeat. In such a world, the following question would become an abstract and groundless one: why have Henryk Mikołaj Górecki’s Three Dances, Op. 34, not found their rightful place in the concert repertoire? Why is this work – chronologically placed halfway between Symphony No. 2 and No. 3, surprising, brilliant, written with a particular flair for timbre and expression – performed so rarely? Nonetheless, in real life, Walter’s love song does not shine in a blaze of glory at first, while the talentless Beckmesser will still trumpet his clerkish shallowness before he finally loses.Usually, however, it is the greatness of vision that wins. Such was the Wagnerian vision, which changed the course of history. Without his orchestral language, Bruckner’s, Mahler’s and Richard Strauss’ oeuvres would certainly be different from those we know today.In his Gesamtkunstwerk, Wagner lent an increasingly greater weight to the orchestra. The instrumental layer ceases to be merely a helpful scaffolding for the vocal show, beginning to explain and add to the drama happening onstage. The furthest he ever ventured away from the academic thinking about form was in the prelude to the Lohengrin (1848). In the prelude to the 1862 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Wagner decided to build a classically structured score. In a sophisticated manner, he brings together motifs taken from the operatic plot, referencing its heroes and crucial moments, simultaneously creating a score of unusual brilliance and elan, a concert masterpiece.Even though Bruckner admired Wagner, the path his symphonies open up for us is one leading to a radically different sphere of artistic expression – a sphere marked by patience and humility, but also by self-destructive uncertainty. In this Brucknerian world, The Sixth is truly exceptional. The least frequently performed, it does not belong to any period – while being the only one never amended by the composer, it also separates the “early” part of his symphonic universe from the “late” works. Amidst contrasting moods and motifs, the meandering harmonies, complicated rhythms and an orchestration fueled by an unrestrained imagination lead from darkness to light.Andrzej SułekConcert duration (intermission included): approximately 100 minutes
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NOSPR / Jackson / Ciepliński / At the singular garden of cosmic speculation

Sun, May 25, 2025, 12:00
Laura Jackson (Conductor), NOSPR, Andrzej Ciepliński (Clarinet)
In her Sinfonia for Orbiting Spheres for orchestra (2014), the American composer and pianist Missy Mazzoli offers spectacular sonic effects. The word „sinfonia” carries is widely associated with the times of Vivaldi and Bach – and rightly so, as there is no dearth of Baroque decoration, ornamentation and stylistic inspiration to be found here. The sonic cloak draped over those rich garments is, however, quite modern. Strings and harmonicas create stained-glass-like loops, the vibraphone lightens the sound, lending it a dancing tone. The orchestral sun rises fast and shines bright.Aaron Copland’s Concerto for clarinet, string orchestra, harp and piano (1948) also glimmers with a blaze of colour. The master’s specific signum, which is bringing together superficially distant styles and techniques (neoclassicism, Mahler’s symphony, jazz and dodecaphony), found its full expression here, while the very first melody of the clarinet makes it clear that Copland is a lyrical poet of sound. This eclecticism, so specific for his music, was transferred to further generations of American composers – and it was in such a convention that Michael Gandolfi designed The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (2004), orchestral piece inspired by the cosmological garden established in Scotland by the landscape architect Charles Jencks and his wife Maggie. Just like at the Jencks’, Gandolfi also offers a multi-coloured space and secrets of the universe coded in moving segments. “It seemed proper for music to participate in this magnificent joining of physics and architecture,” writes the composer about his spectacular opus.Maria Wilczek-Krupa
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NOSPR / Runtz / In the Mediterranean sun

Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 12:00
Dawid Runtz (Conductor), NOSPR, Ewa Jabłczyńska (Guitar), Dariusz Kupiński (Guitar), Marcin Dylla (Guitar), Justyna Sobczak-Dylla (Guitar)
It is not often that we can encounter Balkan folklore in such a spectacular form. Jakov Gotovac’s style is that of late romanticism, but he approaches folk tradition with love. This is why the Serbian kolo can be heard as early as in the first, truculent, chord of the 1927 Symphonic Dance poem. A similar flame is what characterizes the extreme movements of the Concierto andaluz for four guitars and orchestra by Joaquin Rodrigo, although the heart of this piece beats to the rhythm of the Spanish bolero. The dance is not a fast one, but it is pugnacious and lively. The central Adagio brings to mind images of the South – those who know Andalusia will hear the smell of olive groves and see the azure waves reflecting the Mediterranean sun. That was how the blind marqués de los Jardines de Aranjuez heard his fatherland in 1967.It is also under the Spanish sky that the finale of the symphonic evening, contained within the sounds of the ballet suite from Jules Massenet’s grand opera Le Cid, will take place. Seventeenth-century France was impressed by Pierre Corneille’s play about the medieval Castilian knight – similar success was achieved 200 years later by Massenet’s piece based on it (after the 1885 premiere, the opera was performed for 50 consecutive evenings. It was from Corneille and Massenet that the French took the famous and apt phrase: “beautiful like The Cid”.Maria Wilczek-KrupaConcert duration: approximately 70 minutes