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Anna Seredenko
The great Polish Composer Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937) is a bright representative of the stormy epoch of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. His life was inseparably connected with the cultural life of three neighboring countries as he was a Pole born in Ukraine and a subject of the Russian Empire. There is no doubt that his music naturally combines Ukrainian and Polish folklore intonations with the artistic principles of Fr?d?ric Chopin, - the founder of the Polish national school of piano performance, - and genuinely Russian Alexander Scriabin, as well as the opposing trends of German and Austro-Hungarian musical culture, represented by Richard Strauss and Max Reger, on the one pole, and A.Schoenberg and A.Webern on the opposite one. Szymanowski also further developed the ideas and expressive means inherited from the French impressionists (Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel).
His artistic life coincided with one of the most complicated and controversial periods in the history of European music. The first decades of the 20th century saw profound changes in the psychology, the outlook and the perception of the European. Comprehension of the previous trends was closely interlaced with avant-guarde artistic quest, in which the prophesy of the "decline of Europe" went hand in hand with the premonition of the beginning of a new era. The aesthetic context of the period was shaped by opposing trends: continuance of the principles of romanticism and the "anti-romantic rebel"; the vague mystical ideas of symbolism and harmonic clarity of the neo-classicistic principles; exquisitely fine color of the impressionists and a newly discovered primal beauty and simplicity of archaic layers in folklore. Reevaluation of the cultural heritage of the past from the position of the modern time becomes a characteristic feature of Karol Szymanowski's artistic "I". Relying upon the profound regularities of Polish folklore, the composer combines the European musical traditions with his own exploration of the expressive means of the language of music.
The influence of Chopin on his first works is obvious, which is a manifestation of the Polish national tradition and its vitality. With years Szymanowski's views on the destiny of Polish music become more acute, and his life in Warsaw provided the foundation for solving this problem.
Sonata D-Moll for Violin and Piano (Opus 9) belongs to his early works. Written in 1904, it is a traditional tripartite cycle. The dominating lyrical imagery continually finds a new refraction ranging from an elevated pathos to a calm idyll, from passionate tension to fragile psychologism. The first movement - Allegro moderato. Patetico - bears an image of a vibrant and inherently dramatic romantic impulse followed by a delightful poetic song full of love and torture. The second movement - Andante tranquillo e dolce - opens up new facets of a lyrical feeling. Here one can foresee the composer's future impressionistic search in beauty and color. The middle part of the second movement - the contrasted piercing anxious Scherzando - enchants with its magic and a shade of unreality. The reprise brings back to the world of delightful and inspiring lyricism. The third movement - Finale - bursts into a dazzling contras with imperative and impetuous heroic images.
The early 1910s saw major changes in all areas of the composer's artistic life. At that time substantial changes in his musical writing occur, approaching Szymanowski to the stylistic features of the French impressionists, which gives grounds to describe this period as "impressionistic". Bright impressions from his travels to Italy, Algeria, Tunis, Sicily; the very exotics of far-away countries helps Szymanowski to take a different look at his artistic works. As a result Szymanowski discovers a new world in sound - a world of refined imagery, of exotic sound, of bright colors and daring rhythms. It is in this period that the Three Myths (1915) and Violin Concerto No. 1 (1916) appeared.
The distinguishing features of the Three Myths (op.30) stem from the antique myths. The first piece, The Aretouze Fountain, tells about the love of the river god Alpheos to the beautiful nymph Aretouze who turns into a magical fountain running away from his pursuit. The second piece, Narcisus, recreates an image of the river god's son who has fallen in love with his own reflection. The third one, the Driads and Panus, reveals in music the atmosphere of a forest full of sounds, the atmosphere which is revived by the flute of Panus surrounded by the nymphs, but infinitely alone and dreaming of love. The impressionistic concept of "Myths" influences all the expressive means - the tune, the harmony, the tonality, and the texture. The artistic core of the cycle lies in the color of sound and the texture as well as in the phonic arrangement.
In the "Three Paganini Caprices" (op. 40) Szymanowski incarnates his understanding of the great virtuoso's music. The composer creates his own version, distinguished in novelty and difference from its other, "textbook" interpretations. Szymanowski hears the familiar Paganini's text bring established associations, therefore his task becomes to re-intone the original by saturating it with a new meaning. His interpretation is dominated by the spirit of the new epoch with its cosmic ecstatic impulses and oblivious absorption into the sphere of the personal, the intimate.
The Violin Concerto No.1 (op. 16) is inspired by T.Micinski's poem "The Night in May". Szymanowski the impressionist conveys - with refinement and amazing imagery - the color of an elusively fantastic world of nature and the mystery of the poetic soul. The concerto was written in close alliance with P.Kochanski and gained world recognition after the 1920s tour of America.
The "Concerto Overture" (op. 12) was first performed in 1906 in one of the concerts of the cycle "The Young Poland in Music" arranged by Szymanowski and his fiends.
It was such a continuity of the tradition that inspired the Ukrainian cycle "Artists for the Renaissance of Ukraine". Unusual music bears features of late romanticism, stemming from Richard Wagner, Max Reger and Richard Strauss. The Concerto Overture as well as the First Violin Concerto were inspired by Micinski's poem, where the poet glorifies the power of human spirit and its victory over the might of old gods. These ideas have something in common with Nietzschean philosophy and its incarnation in music by Richard Wagner. Both works serve as highest examples of the Polish expressionism in music of the early 20th century.
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