ConcertPulse
Final of the National Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition
Filharmonia Narodowa, Concert Hall (Warszawa)
Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, photo: Marcin Saltarski / Grzesiek Mart co-organiser: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute
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Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, photo: Marcin Saltarski / Grzesiek Mart co-organiser: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute
Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, photo: Marcin Saltarski / Grzesiek Mart co-organiser: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute
Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall, photo: Marcin Saltarski / Grzesiek Mart co-organiser: The Fryderyk Chopin Institute
Signum Saxophone Quartet, photo: Anna Tena Drawing liberally on classical, jazz and American traditional music, Leonard Bernstein’s work is currently experiencing a real renaissance. This is partly due to a recent biographical film (promoted in Poland by Jakub Józef Orlinski at the Warsaw Philharmonic) about the composer’s emotional life. Hence the evening of Valentine’s Day (whether you celebrate it or not) is worth spending with Bernstein’s vibrant, passionate and witty music. In addition, suites from his famous stage works, the operetta Candide and the musical West Side Story, will be orchestrated by none other than the composer’s student and later collaborator and friend Eiji Oue. The evening’s programme will also feature the fascinating attempt made by Malcolm Bolcom at the end of the twentieth century to transfer the Baroque concerto grosso form to contemporary music. In the group of soloists – called the concertina – the American composer placed an unusual ensemble of four saxophonists. It might seem that the most romantic accent of our Valentine’s Day concert will be the suite from Dominick Argent’s opera The Dream of Valentino. However, the opera’s libretto refers not to the patron saint of lovers, but to the famous Hollywood actor, dancer and romantic lead of the silent film era, Rudolph Valentino.
Signum Saxophone Quartet, photo: Anna Tena Drawing liberally on classical, jazz and American traditional music, Leonard Bernstein’s work is currently experiencing a real renaissance. This is partly due to a recent biographical film (promoted in Poland by Jakub Józef Orlinski at the Warsaw Philharmonic) about the composer’s emotional life. Hence the evening of Valentine’s Day (whether you celebrate it or not) is worth spending with Bernstein’s vibrant, passionate and witty music. In addition, suites from his famous stage works, the operetta Candide and the musical West Side Story, will be orchestrated by none other than the composer’s student and later collaborator and friend Eiji Oue. The evening’s programme will also feature the fascinating attempt made by Malcolm Bolcom at the end of the twentieth century to transfer the Baroque concerto grosso form to contemporary music. In the group of soloists – called the concertina – the American composer placed an unusual ensemble of four saxophonists. It might seem that the most romantic accent of our Valentine’s Day concert will be the suite from Dominick Argent’s opera The Dream of Valentino. However, the opera’s libretto refers not to the patron saint of lovers, but to the famous Hollywood actor, dancer and romantic lead of the silent film era, Rudolph Valentino.
Kirill Karabits, photo: Mark Allan ‘Essentially it is a work for two orchestras – one live, one dead’ is how American composer and DJ Mason Bates, who wrote an opera about Steve Jobs, describes in a nutshell his composition Auditorium, first performed in San Francisco in 2016. The concept is linked to the composer’s newfound passion for Baroque instrumental music. It represents a kind of conversation between an orchestra playing live and an ensemble of early instruments 'captured’ on a remixed tape. Edvard Grieg subjected his only completed Piano Concerto to a more traditional ‘remix’ several times. One of the great Romantic concertos, it was premiered in 1869, but the composer put the finishing touches to it in the early twentieth century, a few weeks before his death. Here the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will be accompanied by eminent Italian pianist Federico Colli, winner of the Salzburg and Leeds competitions. In addition to references to instrumental music of the Italian Baroque in Bates’s piece and to Norwegian folklore in Grieg’s composition, our programme will also include subtle allusions to traditional American jazz. These can be found in John Adams’s colourful symphonic fresco City Noir, in which the composer alludes to the cinematic, dreamlike aura of the city of Los Angeles in the post-war years.
Kirill Karabits, photo: Mark Allan ‘Essentially it is a work for two orchestras – one live, one dead’ is how American composer and DJ Mason Bates, who wrote an opera about Steve Jobs, describes in a nutshell his composition Auditorium, first performed in San Francisco in 2016. The concept is linked to the composer’s newfound passion for Baroque instrumental music. It represents a kind of conversation between an orchestra playing live and an ensemble of early instruments 'captured’ on a remixed tape. Edvard Grieg subjected his only completed Piano Concerto to a more traditional ‘remix’ several times. One of the great Romantic concertos, it was premiered in 1869, but the composer put the finishing touches to it in the early twentieth century, a few weeks before his death. Here the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will be accompanied by eminent Italian pianist Federico Colli, winner of the Salzburg and Leeds competitions. In addition to references to instrumental music of the Italian Baroque in Bates’s piece and to Norwegian folklore in Grieg’s composition, our programme will also include subtle allusions to traditional American jazz. These can be found in John Adams’s colourful symphonic fresco City Noir, in which the composer alludes to the cinematic, dreamlike aura of the city of Los Angeles in the post-war years.
Geoffrey Paterson, photo: Benjamin Ealovega It sometimes happens that an artist dedicates his work not to one person, but to a whole collective. When Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov arrived for the first rehearsal of his Capriccio espagnol, the St Petersburg orchestra was said to have applauded him repeatedly. The touched composer decided to repay the ensemble with an equally spontaneous dedication of this famous Iberian-inspired piece. Somewhat forgotten today, Saverio Mercadante was one of the most important figures in Italian opera of the nineteenth century. He created more than 60 works in the genre, winning praise from the likes of Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini. Mercadante, later director of the famous conservatory in Naples – a city vying for the title of one of Europe’s operatic capitals – also wrote a set of six concertos for flute, of which he himself was a virtuoso. Particularly popular with performers and listeners was the second of these works, in the key of E minor, preserved in versions for various forces, from chamber to symphonic. Full of technical acrobatics and representing a considerable challenge for the soloist, this work abounds in showstopping passages and phrases full of distant intervallic leaps, but does not shy away from bel canto operatic lyricism either. Edward Elgar’s second and last completed Symphony, in E flat major, is among his most personal works. It was dedicated to the memory of the late king and the composer’s namesake, Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria. First performed in 1911, this late Romantic work is full of Elgar’s characteristic short, repeated motifs and attempts to cross the boundaries of tonality. The second movement is a poignant funeral march, an elegy perhaps related not only to the death of the sovereign, but probably also mourning the composer’s more personal losses – the passing of two close friends.
Geoffrey Paterson, photo: Benjamin Ealovega It sometimes happens that an artist dedicates his work not to one person, but to a whole collective. When Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov arrived for the first rehearsal of his Capriccio espagnol, the St Petersburg orchestra was said to have applauded him repeatedly. The touched composer decided to repay the ensemble with an equally spontaneous dedication of this famous Iberian-inspired piece. Somewhat forgotten today, Saverio Mercadante was one of the most important figures in Italian opera of the nineteenth century. He created more than 60 works in the genre, winning praise from the likes of Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini. Mercadante, later director of the famous conservatory in Naples – a city vying for the title of one of Europe’s operatic capitals – also wrote a set of six concertos for flute, of which he himself was a virtuoso. Particularly popular with performers and listeners was the second of these works, in the key of E minor, preserved in versions for various forces, from chamber to symphonic. Full of technical acrobatics and representing a considerable challenge for the soloist, this work abounds in showstopping passages and phrases full of distant intervallic leaps, but does not shy away from bel canto operatic lyricism either. Edward Elgar’s second and last completed Symphony, in E flat major, is among his most personal works. It was dedicated to the memory of the late king and the composer’s namesake, Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria. First performed in 1911, this late Romantic work is full of Elgar’s characteristic short, repeated motifs and attempts to cross the boundaries of tonality. The second movement is a poignant funeral march, an elegy perhaps related not only to the death of the sovereign, but probably also mourning the composer’s more personal losses – the passing of two close friends.
Lise de la Salle, photo: Stéphane Gallois Ferenc Liszt was one of those composers who enjoyed pushing boundaries. He even managed to invert the classic chronology of inspiration before creation. In the case of one of his first (and most famous) symphonic poems, entitled Preludes, the idea for the title – alluding to an ode by Alphonse de Lamartine – came when the work was almost finished (it was originally intended as an overture to the cycle The Four Elements). In 1855 an unusual event took place in Weimar, with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique performed in the presence and with the active participation of both composers. Liszt sat at the piano; Berlioz conducted the orchestra. The first sketches for Liszt’s work date as far back as 1830, so it may have taken as long as 25 years for the composer to complete this concerto, which lasts less than 20 minutes and was unveiled to the public in Weimar. This work is long enough to give the pianist the opportunity to show off their technical skills, as is foreshadowed by the work’s striking opening, with the famous octave theme, concealing – as the anecdote goes – a certain (never revealed) joke on fussy critics. The notion of the extra-musical programme, eagerly taken up by the Romantics, was elevated by Alexander Scriabin to the registers of transcendence and mysticism. His Symphony No. 3, from the early twentieth century, also known as the ‘Divine Poem’, is considered one of the greatest achievements on his path to multimedia expressionist mysteries.
Lise de la Salle, photo: Stéphane Gallois Ferenc Liszt was one of those composers who enjoyed pushing boundaries. He even managed to invert the classic chronology of inspiration before creation. In the case of one of his first (and most famous) symphonic poems, entitled Preludes, the idea for the title – alluding to an ode by Alphonse de Lamartine – came when the work was almost finished (it was originally intended as an overture to the cycle The Four Elements). In 1855 an unusual event took place in Weimar, with Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique performed in the presence and with the active participation of both composers. Liszt sat at the piano; Berlioz conducted the orchestra. The first sketches for Liszt’s work date as far back as 1830, so it may have taken as long as 25 years for the composer to complete this concerto, which lasts less than 20 minutes and was unveiled to the public in Weimar. This work is long enough to give the pianist the opportunity to show off their technical skills, as is foreshadowed by the work’s striking opening, with the famous octave theme, concealing – as the anecdote goes – a certain (never revealed) joke on fussy critics. The notion of the extra-musical programme, eagerly taken up by the Romantics, was elevated by Alexander Scriabin to the registers of transcendence and mysticism. His Symphony No. 3, from the early twentieth century, also known as the ‘Divine Poem’, is considered one of the greatest achievements on his path to multimedia expressionist mysteries.
Mathew Halls, photo: Benjamin Ealovega The final bar of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major has been compared by conductor Colin Davis to the closing of a coffin lid. Although the great Finn still had more than 30 years to live after it was written, it is one of his last completed works. The unusual one-movement form of the work, which was originally to be titled ‘Fantasia Sinfonica’, has become an interpretative challenge for critics and analysts. While unanimously describing the work as revolutionary, scholars have differed in the justifications for their judgement. Benjamin Britten’s dark opera Peter Grimes, which tells the story of a fisherman suspected of murdering a young journeyman, contains highly successful orchestral interludes which, in a slightly altered order and with minor alterations, were successfully published separately as Four Sea Interludes shortly after the opera’s premiere in 1945. They consist of ‘Dawn’, an illustration of a calm sea, ‘Sunday Morning’, with the sound of tolling church bells imitated by horn, the majestic nocturne ‘Moonlight’ and the deathly terrifying ‘Tempest’. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony was received less warmly than the Seventh, because, as the offended composer was to comment, ‘the Eighth is better’. Beethoven undoubtedly put more work into it than into its predecessor, as the surviving sketches testify. Performed for the first time under the baton of its increasingly hard-of-hearing composer in Vienna in 1814, it was not dedicated to anyone, perhaps due to its cool reception.
Mathew Halls, photo: Benjamin Ealovega The final bar of Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 in C major has been compared by conductor Colin Davis to the closing of a coffin lid. Although the great Finn still had more than 30 years to live after it was written, it is one of his last completed works. The unusual one-movement form of the work, which was originally to be titled ‘Fantasia Sinfonica’, has become an interpretative challenge for critics and analysts. While unanimously describing the work as revolutionary, scholars have differed in the justifications for their judgement. Benjamin Britten’s dark opera Peter Grimes, which tells the story of a fisherman suspected of murdering a young journeyman, contains highly successful orchestral interludes which, in a slightly altered order and with minor alterations, were successfully published separately as Four Sea Interludes shortly after the opera’s premiere in 1945. They consist of ‘Dawn’, an illustration of a calm sea, ‘Sunday Morning’, with the sound of tolling church bells imitated by horn, the majestic nocturne ‘Moonlight’ and the deathly terrifying ‘Tempest’. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony was received less warmly than the Seventh, because, as the offended composer was to comment, ‘the Eighth is better’. Beethoven undoubtedly put more work into it than into its predecessor, as the surviving sketches testify. Performed for the first time under the baton of its increasingly hard-of-hearing composer in Vienna in 1814, it was not dedicated to anyone, perhaps due to its cool reception.
Nemanja Radulović, photo: Sever Zolak If one examines Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović’s stage performances and recordings, one may gain the impression that he is a modern-day incarnation of the virtuosos of old, who were sometimes suspected of conniving with the powers of hell. After all, one of the ensembles founded by Radulović bears the provocative name Les trilles du diable (‘the devil’s trills’), referring to the famous sonata by Giuseppe Tartini. Radulović has been playing violin since the age of seven and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire aged 14. He has recorded for major record companies and given concerts in famous halls and open-air venues associated not only with the world of classical music. In Warsaw, he will be performing as the soloist in Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Premiered in 1940, this lengthy work is full of references to the traditional music of the Caucasus, which had inspired the composer since his childhood. A perfect introduction to the Serbian virtuoso’s performance will be Rolf Liebermann’s Furioso. This frenetic composition, which combines the form of an Italian overture with twelve-tone technique and ostinato, was presented with great success in the mid-twentieth century in Darmstadt – a Mecca for avant-garde artists. The concert will conclude with Witold Maliszewski’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, which refers to classical models. Particularly noteworthy is the colourful instrumentation of the third movement, based on the form of a theme with variations.
Nemanja Radulović, photo: Sever Zolak If one examines Serbian violinist Nemanja Radulović’s stage performances and recordings, one may gain the impression that he is a modern-day incarnation of the virtuosos of old, who were sometimes suspected of conniving with the powers of hell. After all, one of the ensembles founded by Radulović bears the provocative name Les trilles du diable (‘the devil’s trills’), referring to the famous sonata by Giuseppe Tartini. Radulović has been playing violin since the age of seven and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire aged 14. He has recorded for major record companies and given concerts in famous halls and open-air venues associated not only with the world of classical music. In Warsaw, he will be performing as the soloist in Aram Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Premiered in 1940, this lengthy work is full of references to the traditional music of the Caucasus, which had inspired the composer since his childhood. A perfect introduction to the Serbian virtuoso’s performance will be Rolf Liebermann’s Furioso. This frenetic composition, which combines the form of an Italian overture with twelve-tone technique and ostinato, was presented with great success in the mid-twentieth century in Darmstadt – a Mecca for avant-garde artists. The concert will conclude with Witold Maliszewski’s Symphony No. 3 in C minor, which refers to classical models. Particularly noteworthy is the colourful instrumentation of the third movement, based on the form of a theme with variations.
Jan Willem de Vriend, photo: Emelie Schäfer In the midst of the inevitable disputes over the most important achievement in Johann Sebastian Bach’s oeuvre, the St Matthew Passion keeps cropping up. As English musician and scholar John Butt has noted, it is curious that a masterpiece whose emotional charge reaches the limit of human endurance was written in a secondary German centre as Leipzig was in the eighteenth century. Not all those attending the Good Friday Lutheran services during which the Passions were performed in the Saxon city necessarily appreciated the massive scale of Bach’s work, together with its subtle drama. Today’s reception of the Passion would probably infuriate both the Leipzig townspeople and the composer himself. It is difficult to count all its contemporary performances and recordings, let alone the attempts at scientific interpretations of the symbols hidden on various levels of the score. Numerous statements from present-day listeners echo the conviction of the timelessness of the arias, recitatives and choruses from the St Matthew Passion, which, as it turns out, appeal not only to believers, since Bach employed almost every available means of sound painting to tell a profoundly human story about the fragility of life, love, betrayal, violence and loss.
Jan Willem de Vriend, photo: Emelie Schäfer In the midst of the inevitable disputes over the most important achievement in Johann Sebastian Bach’s oeuvre, the St Matthew Passion keeps cropping up. As English musician and scholar John Butt has noted, it is curious that a masterpiece whose emotional charge reaches the limit of human endurance was written in a secondary German centre as Leipzig was in the eighteenth century. Not all those attending the Good Friday Lutheran services during which the Passions were performed in the Saxon city necessarily appreciated the massive scale of Bach’s work, together with its subtle drama. Today’s reception of the Passion would probably infuriate both the Leipzig townspeople and the composer himself. It is difficult to count all its contemporary performances and recordings, let alone the attempts at scientific interpretations of the symbols hidden on various levels of the score. Numerous statements from present-day listeners echo the conviction of the timelessness of the arias, recitatives and choruses from the St Matthew Passion, which, as it turns out, appeal not only to believers, since Bach employed almost every available means of sound painting to tell a profoundly human story about the fragility of life, love, betrayal, violence and loss.
Antonello Manacorda, photo: Nikolaj Lund Beethoven seems to have ‘commissioned’ his Symphony No. 1 in C major from himself. The ambition to tackle a form that the Romantic aesthetic revolution would soon be treating as a laboratory for absolute music would have suited the Viennese Classic’s character. The increasingly prominent 30-year-old composer dedicated the completed work, on which he worked meticulously for many years, to Gottfried van Swieten, the protector of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was the achievements of those composers, kindly disposed towards the young Beethoven, with whose output he would hardly have dared to vie at the time, that served as the starting point for his supremely successful debut symphony. The Symphony No. 1 by the twentieth-century classic Dmitry Shostakovich was his diploma piece in the composition class of the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated at the age of 19. Characterised by the composer’s typical play of edgy motifs, march-like rhythms and clear textures, this work soon ventured beyond the university walls, bringing its young composer international acclaim. Subsequent anniversaries of the symphony’s first performance at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1926 were later celebrated by Shostakovich for the rest of his life, while that famous institution, remembering the premieres of his other works, later repaid the favour by adopting Shostakovich as its patron.
Antonello Manacorda, photo: Nikolaj Lund Beethoven seems to have ‘commissioned’ his Symphony No. 1 in C major from himself. The ambition to tackle a form that the Romantic aesthetic revolution would soon be treating as a laboratory for absolute music would have suited the Viennese Classic’s character. The increasingly prominent 30-year-old composer dedicated the completed work, on which he worked meticulously for many years, to Gottfried van Swieten, the protector of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It was the achievements of those composers, kindly disposed towards the young Beethoven, with whose output he would hardly have dared to vie at the time, that served as the starting point for his supremely successful debut symphony. The Symphony No. 1 by the twentieth-century classic Dmitry Shostakovich was his diploma piece in the composition class of the Leningrad Conservatory, from which he graduated at the age of 19. Characterised by the composer’s typical play of edgy motifs, march-like rhythms and clear textures, this work soon ventured beyond the university walls, bringing its young composer international acclaim. Subsequent anniversaries of the symphony’s first performance at the Leningrad Philharmonic in 1926 were later celebrated by Shostakovich for the rest of his life, while that famous institution, remembering the premieres of his other works, later repaid the favour by adopting Shostakovich as its patron.
Anna Sułkowska-Migoń, photo: Joanna Gałuszka The contemplative nature of much of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s work is said to stem from his love of poetry. After his teacher introduced him to the visionary work of Walt Whitman, the collection Leaves of Grass became the composer’s ‘constant companion’ and the inspiration for Toward the Unknown Region, a song for choir and orchestra first performed in Leeds in 1907. One critic at the time hailed Williams as the leading British composer of the new generation. Futurist poetry, meanwhile, would suit the character of Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto. This work reveals the complex nature of the instrument, which, according to the composer, ‘can be at the same time warm-hearted and completely hysterical, as mild as balsam, and screaming like a tram-car on poorly-greased rails’. Having befriended the members of the Copenhagen Brass Quintet, he wished to compose a musical portrait for each of them, in the form of a solo concerto. Perhaps it was the broad phrases of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s symphonic writing that led observers to associate many of his works with the landscapes of the countries he visited. His Symphony No. 3 in A minor, for example, supposedly evokes the dense fog-shrouded mountain landscapes of Scotland, which the composer visited in 1829. Yet the composer himself did not refer to such inspirations after completing the long journey of several years to completing this work, which received its Scottish nickname from well-meaning listeners.
Anna Sułkowska-Migoń, photo: Joanna Gałuszka The contemplative nature of much of Ralph Vaughan Williams’s work is said to stem from his love of poetry. After his teacher introduced him to the visionary work of Walt Whitman, the collection Leaves of Grass became the composer’s ‘constant companion’ and the inspiration for Toward the Unknown Region, a song for choir and orchestra first performed in Leeds in 1907. One critic at the time hailed Williams as the leading British composer of the new generation. Futurist poetry, meanwhile, would suit the character of Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto. This work reveals the complex nature of the instrument, which, according to the composer, ‘can be at the same time warm-hearted and completely hysterical, as mild as balsam, and screaming like a tram-car on poorly-greased rails’. Having befriended the members of the Copenhagen Brass Quintet, he wished to compose a musical portrait for each of them, in the form of a solo concerto. Perhaps it was the broad phrases of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s symphonic writing that led observers to associate many of his works with the landscapes of the countries he visited. His Symphony No. 3 in A minor, for example, supposedly evokes the dense fog-shrouded mountain landscapes of Scotland, which the composer visited in 1829. Yet the composer himself did not refer to such inspirations after completing the long journey of several years to completing this work, which received its Scottish nickname from well-meaning listeners.
Abracadabra, hocus-pocus, hey presto, bam! FeNek knows lots of musical spells with which he can conjure up rhythms and melodies, as well as instruments. What is that magic? What does an orchestra sprinkled with a good fairy’s magic dust sound like? To find out, come to the concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic and bring a hand-made wand with you. Who knows what you’ll be able to conjure up? Bring to the concert… a hand-made wand
Abracadabra, hocus-pocus, hey presto, bam! FeNek knows lots of musical spells with which he can conjure up rhythms and melodies, as well as instruments. What is that magic? What does an orchestra sprinkled with a good fairy’s magic dust sound like? To find out, come to the concert at the Warsaw Philharmonic and bring a hand-made wand with you. Who knows what you’ll be able to conjure up? Bring to the concert… a hand-made wand
Johan Dalene, photo: Marco Borggreve Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy whose talent enchanted Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. He staged his most famous opera at the age of 23, pursued a career as a conductor shortly afterwards and then became, still at a very young age, a lecturer at the Staatsakademie für Musik in Vienna. Nothing foreshadowed his great turn to film, which – bored by the silent image – decided to speak with an audible voice. A few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, Korngold moved to the US, and he eventually took American citizenship. He became permanently associated with Hollywood, setting the mould for later film music composers. At the same time, he remained faithful to the style of the composers whom he had captivated in his early career. Korngold wrote music for many films, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Kings Row (1941), twice receiving an Oscar. However, he did not abandon the classical forms and contexts of symphonic music. In 1945 he completed his Violin Concerto, with Jascha Heifetz performing the solo part. It is undoubtedly one of the most ‘cinematic’ of instrumental concertos, be it only because the composer took numerous themes from his film scores.
Johan Dalene, photo: Marco Borggreve Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy whose talent enchanted Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. He staged his most famous opera at the age of 23, pursued a career as a conductor shortly afterwards and then became, still at a very young age, a lecturer at the Staatsakademie für Musik in Vienna. Nothing foreshadowed his great turn to film, which – bored by the silent image – decided to speak with an audible voice. A few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, Korngold moved to the US, and he eventually took American citizenship. He became permanently associated with Hollywood, setting the mould for later film music composers. At the same time, he remained faithful to the style of the composers whom he had captivated in his early career. Korngold wrote music for many films, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Kings Row (1941), twice receiving an Oscar. However, he did not abandon the classical forms and contexts of symphonic music. In 1945 he completed his Violin Concerto, with Jascha Heifetz performing the solo part. It is undoubtedly one of the most ‘cinematic’ of instrumental concertos, be it only because the composer took numerous themes from his film scores.
Marianna Bednarska, photo: Venera Red / Kolberg Percussion When a writer commissions a composer to write music for a play, they must expect that the latter’s name will be henceforth associated with the title of the work. Just as it would be difficult to name from memory the authors of the words to all our favourite operatic arias, in the case of the drama Peer Gynt, many of us first think of Edvard Grieg, the composer of the brilliant music, rather than the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Over time, Grieg divided selected fragments of his music for the play into two suites that migrated out into the wide world, successfully detaching themselves from their theatrical original. Exercises, studies and passages are, on the one hand, the bane of most musicians and, on the other, useful practice. Overheard by American composer Kevin Puts as he passed an auditorium, the simple harmonic progressions used by a pianist to play himself in may have influenced the shape of his warm-sounding Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra, written towards the end of the last century. Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1, written a century earlier, stems from the tradition of Romantic programme music, although the composer himself denied that it was accompanied by extra-musical content. Somewhat in spite of the composer’s claims, researchers have arrived at the work’s precisely thought-out (though ultimately abandoned) programme, to be titled Musical Dialogue, drawing on such inspirations as poetry by Heine and probably also a Shakespeare play.
Marianna Bednarska, photo: Venera Red / Kolberg Percussion When a writer commissions a composer to write music for a play, they must expect that the latter’s name will be henceforth associated with the title of the work. Just as it would be difficult to name from memory the authors of the words to all our favourite operatic arias, in the case of the drama Peer Gynt, many of us first think of Edvard Grieg, the composer of the brilliant music, rather than the playwright Henrik Ibsen. Over time, Grieg divided selected fragments of his music for the play into two suites that migrated out into the wide world, successfully detaching themselves from their theatrical original. Exercises, studies and passages are, on the one hand, the bane of most musicians and, on the other, useful practice. Overheard by American composer Kevin Puts as he passed an auditorium, the simple harmonic progressions used by a pianist to play himself in may have influenced the shape of his warm-sounding Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra, written towards the end of the last century. Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1, written a century earlier, stems from the tradition of Romantic programme music, although the composer himself denied that it was accompanied by extra-musical content. Somewhat in spite of the composer’s claims, researchers have arrived at the work’s precisely thought-out (though ultimately abandoned) programme, to be titled Musical Dialogue, drawing on such inspirations as poetry by Heine and probably also a Shakespeare play.
Christoph König, photo: Christian Wind Who doesn’t like riddles? The history of music is full of them. Suffice it to mention mediaeval and Renaissance canons or Baroque rhetorical figures hidden on various levels of a score. There are also musical-philosophical puzzles for which there is no simple solution. Perhaps this kind of test was what Gustav Mahler had in mind when he wrote in a letter to an Austrian writer and musicologist: ‘My Sixth will pose riddles that only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five symphonies may hope to solve’. Seemingly classical, in four movements, it is a monumental symphony in every respect. Written for the largest ensemble of the composer’s purely instrumental works, the Symphony No. 6 in A minor demands huge commitment from the performers and conductor, but does not spare the listener in any respect either. We do not find here too many of the catchy melodies familiar from Mahler’s previous works. There is another unsolved riddle associated with this work, concerning the order in which the movements should be played. Originally, the gloomy first movement was to be followed by the frenzied Scherzo and then the melancholic Andante moderato. However, the score published on the basis of the version from the first performance had the two inner movements switched by the composer. It was only after Mahler’s death that his wife Alma pointed out that the original order was correct!
Christoph König, photo: Christian Wind Who doesn’t like riddles? The history of music is full of them. Suffice it to mention mediaeval and Renaissance canons or Baroque rhetorical figures hidden on various levels of a score. There are also musical-philosophical puzzles for which there is no simple solution. Perhaps this kind of test was what Gustav Mahler had in mind when he wrote in a letter to an Austrian writer and musicologist: ‘My Sixth will pose riddles that only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five symphonies may hope to solve’. Seemingly classical, in four movements, it is a monumental symphony in every respect. Written for the largest ensemble of the composer’s purely instrumental works, the Symphony No. 6 in A minor demands huge commitment from the performers and conductor, but does not spare the listener in any respect either. We do not find here too many of the catchy melodies familiar from Mahler’s previous works. There is another unsolved riddle associated with this work, concerning the order in which the movements should be played. Originally, the gloomy first movement was to be followed by the frenzied Scherzo and then the melancholic Andante moderato. However, the score published on the basis of the version from the first performance had the two inner movements switched by the composer. It was only after Mahler’s death that his wife Alma pointed out that the original order was correct!
Piotr Anderszewski, photo: Simon Fowler / Warner Classics 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Maurice Ravel Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé was already hailed as a masterpiece on the day of its premiere. Commissioned by the famous Ballets Russes, it gained popularity mainly in the form of two orchestral suites. In this Suite, the references to ancient Greece, from which the ballet’s libretto derives, are subtle and impressionistic, thanks principally to the composer’s masterful handling of the orchestra. Ravel brings out the gamut of colouristic possibilities in Daphnis et Chloé, enriching the orchestra with the most beautiful and natural sound of the human voice. Łukasz Kaczmarowski