Classical Music | Violin Music

Karol Szymanowski

Violin Concerto No. 1, Op. 35  Play

Jennifer Koh Violin
Grant Park Orchestra Orchestra
Carlos Kalmar Conductor

Recorded on 03/23/2009, uploaded on 03/23/2009

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

"10/10 - Koh offers three works for violin and orchestra by three very different Eastern European composers, none of them over-exposed and all of them distinctive. In other words, the complete program is as coherent and well thought-out as the performances are outstanding." - ClassicsToday.com

"Jennifer Koh is a risk-taking, high-octane player of the kind who grabs the listener by the ears and refuses to let go. . . . A scorching talent that should on no account be missed." - The Strad

"[Carlos] Kalmar and the Grant Park Orchestra perform . . . with exuberance, commitment and edge." - The New York Times

... The works of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937) took some time to achieve their rightful place in music history, and remain relatively unfamiliar in the United States. But they amply reward those willing to open their ears to a truly unique style, forged from eclectic infl uences into a poignant and highly individual sound.

Like so many artists who emerged into adulthood around the turn of the 20th century, Szymanowski lived through the shattering of the old world order precipitated by World War I - an event that changed far more than national boundaries and the names of rulers. Old ways of living and thinking were destroyed; fortunes were lost; time-honored traditions were ridiculed and forgotten. Raised in a secure atmosphere of aristocratic privilege, enriched by his parents' love for literature and music, the talented young pianist-composer grew up without the expectation of having to earn a living. His family's estate was near Kiev in the Ukraine, but his family maintained strong ties to its roots in Poland. Home-schooled in both academics and music, Szymanowski moved to Warsaw in 1901 for studies at the conservatory. He soon joined other students in a movement that became known as Young Poland, which hoped to encourage more progressive, less provincial attitudes in the city's musical establishment, and to fi nd opportunities for the performance of their own compositions.

Young Poland included the violinist Pawel Kochanski, who became Szymanowski's lifelong friend, and a promising pianist named Artur Rubinstein. Young Poland concerts were given in both Warsaw and Berlin in 1906; Szymanowski's Concert Overture and Variations on a Polish Folk Theme drew favorable critical attention. New experiences now beckoned. Like other young men of means, he devoted his next few years largely to travel, visiting Berlin, Vienna, Paris, numerous Italian cities, Sicily, and North Africa. Eagerly opening his mind, spirit, and ears to these new environments, he absorbed infl uences including German late Romanticism, the works of Debussy and Ravel, Arab poetry and, most especially, the mix of ancient and medieval cultures he found in Sicily.

Szymanowski's most important stage work, the opera King Roger, was premiered in Warsaw in 1926. Set in medieval Sicily, it vividly portrays a conflict between the conventional, ordered world of the Christian church and royal court that held sway in the Middle Ages and an older and perhaps freer system, harking back to the traditions of classical Greece. This older world is represented in the opera by a mysterious, charismatic figure called the Shepherd. King Roger reveals a great deal about Szymanowski, both intellectually and emotionally. Beyond the enthusiastic medievalism common to Romantic-era artists, it refl ects the philosophical conflict often described as Apollonian vs. Dionysian: the light of reason contrasted with the "darker" impulses of the human psyche. In terms of Szymanowski's own psyche, the opera conveys a large measure of sexual ambivalence. King Roger has a Queen but is also strongly attracted to the Shepherd: whether in physical or in spiritual terms is left unclear. Seen through contemporary eyes, King Roger expresses the anguish of a homosexual man trapped and repressed by the heterosexual hegemony of his time.

King Roger was several years in the future when Szymanowski returned to his parents' home in 1914 to wait out the war and grapple with the myriad stylistic influences that affected his development as both a writer and a composer. As a Polish national, he was exempt from being drafted into the Russian army (Ukraine was then part of Russia) and would in any case have been disqualified for frail health: he suffered from the effects of a childhood injury, depression, and above all tuberculosis. His output during the war included an unfinished novel, his Symphony No. 3, Myths for violin and piano, Metopes for solo piano, songs on exotic themes from Arabian poetry, and the Violin Concerto No. 1, dedicated to his friend Kochanski, who contributed the virtuosic cadenza.

The Szymanowski family was forced off its estate in 1919, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. The composer eventually settled in Warsaw and added yet another thread to the complex weave of his stylistic identity - that of the newly-resurgent Polish nationalist movement. He stayed in contact with Kochanski and Rubinstein during visits to Paris and the U.S., but increasingly spent time at a resort in Poland's Tatra Mountains. Polish nationalism influenced a number of his late works, including a set of mazurkas, the ballet Hanarsie, the String Quartet No. 2, and his choral masterpiece, Stabat Mater.

Now middle-aged and needing to earn money, Szymanowski embarked on a brief tenure as head of the Warsaw Conservatory, but found himself unhappy in an academic setting and artistically at odds with the faculty (though not with the students). He also undertook a career as a concert pianist despite his modest keyboard talents. Syzmanowski gained fame and respect in the 1930s through international performances of his compositions, but the eff ects of tuberculosis precluded further creative activity. He died in a Swiss sanatorium at the age of 54.

The Violin Concerto No. 1 represents a kind of early midpoint of Szymanowski's continually-evolving style. A large, late-Romantic orchestra, augmented by piano and harps, supports and enhances an exuberant, rhapsodic solo part that tells us much about the virtuosity of the dedicatee, Pawel Kochanski. Three sections, the fi rst two both marked Vivace, are performed without pause. The third is simply labeled Cadenza. The structure of the work is essentially that of a gigantic rondo, with a lyrical main theme transformed at each re-introduction between episodes of greater agitation, sometimes shared by the orchestra and soloist, sometimes presented in dialogue.

The large orchestra is not employed as a monolithic sound source. While there are many "tutti" passages, Syzmanowksi just as often spotlights an individual section - winds, horns, low strings - in the ongoing interchanges. Gustav Mahler famously broke up his huge orchestral forces into chamber-sized groupings; Szymanowski uses the same technique. Mahler, of course, never wrote a violin concerto. At times, it almost seems as if Szymanowski has done it for him. The infl uence of the late-Romantic music of Mahler and Richard Strauss is obvious, but in the end the work doesn't sound like them: it sounds like Szymanowski.

Out of a frenetic orchestral opening gently emerges the first violin solo, calming and subtly dominating the texture. This sequence happens twice more, as the orchestra re-asserts itself and the soloist's lyrical lines grow seemingly inevitably out of the surrounding agitation. These early violin solos establish both the main theme and the high range in which the soloist will play throughout most of the work.

Large symphonic climaxes, now majestic, now frenzied, separate the passages where the soloist reiterates and elaborates the main theme - which is presented at times in clear, diatonic, tonal fashion and at other times with more dissonant colors. The violin plays double-stops and dramatic running figurations up and down its full range, though the higher ranges are always the most prominent, reaching up to the instrument's highest notes, imparting an intense sense of yearning. Leading up to the final section, the violin restates its main theme, which the orchestra takes up briefly, but then stops abruptly as the soloist begins Kochanski's cadenza, a brilliant collection of runs, chords, and octaves that brings the emotion of the piece to a climax. The orchestra responds with a full-strength coda that leads the violin on to one more triumphant statement of the main theme, soaring over an accompaniment that becomes gentle and restrained, presaging a sly, quiet ending.

Andrea Lamoreaux is music director of WFMT-FM, Chicago's classical-music station.


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Listeners' Comments        (You have to be logged in to leave comments)

I saw Jennifer not too along ago - playing Tchaikovsky rather well. This one is nice!

Submitted by Violon on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 16:06. Report abuse