Symphonic Concert

Karen Gomyo, photo: Gabrielle Revere It is generally accepted that short pieces performed at the beginning of symphonic concerts play the role of a kind of overture (even if they are not overtures in the strict sense of the word). What, then, is the function of the composition Ceci n'est pas une ouverture [This is not an overture], written a dozen years ago by Paweł Szymański for the Warsaw Philharmonic and the Polish Composers' Union? Perhaps similar to French surrealist René Magritte’s famous painting signed Ceci n'est pas une pipe, which depicts nothing but a pipe. Szymanski's thrilling piece conjures up the image of a laboratory technician dissecting classical scores in front of an audience in the anatomical theatre he has built. Sergei Prokofiev’s ‘Classical’ Symphony, on the other hand, provides a fascinating answer to the question of how Joseph Haydn might have composed if a time machine had transported him to the twentieth century. Another great composer writing at the beginning of the last century took an imaginary journey (this time in space). Ibéria, the middle and longest movement in Claude Debussy’s Images cycle, is regarded as one of the great musical evocations of Spain, although the composer was never fated to visit the country. Max Bruch, who was already old at the time, reportedly found it difficult to come to terms with the end of romanticism. His Violin Concerto No. 1, composed while Johannes Brahms was still alive, was so successful that hardly anyone noticed that the German composer had written two others!