Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater (1926) and the hymn Veni Creator, composed four years later, are closely linked stylistically and belong to the same current in his output, commonly described as his “national” period. Whereas Szymanowski's decision to set the medieval Lenten sequence Stabat Mater reflected a conscious spiritual and artistic commitment, resulting in one of the undisputed masterpieces of Polish music, Veni Creator – set to Stanisław Wyspiański's ardently patriotic paraphrase of the Latin hymn – was conceived as an occasional work. It failed to win the composer's own esteem and, to this day, remains only infrequently performed.

Towards the end of her life, the style of Grażyna Bacewicz, one of the most distinguished Polish composers of the twentieth century, underwent a remarkable transformation, embracing sonorism – the avant-garde movement that emerged in the 1960s and focused on experimental explorations of sound itself. It was in this spirit that she composed her Cello Concerto No. 2 in 1963. The work showcases the orchestra’s unexpected and unconventional sonorities, presented as a mosaic of contrasting patches of colour, while the solo cello part, in the composer’s own words, “is the thread that binds the whole of the music into some [overarching] meaning”.

Wojciech Kilar ranks among the most distinctive figures in twentieth-century Polish music, and his symphonic poem Krzesany (1974) remains his best-known work and the composition most closely identified with the compositional craft of the Silesian master. Soon after its première, the work came to be regarded as the flagship composition of a new current in Polish music which, after a period of radical exploration and avant-garde experimentation, sought once again to engage in dialogue with a wider audience. Brilliant, exuberant and richly coloured, Krzesany makes no attempt to conceal its composer’s deep affinity with the musical traditions of the Podhale region.

Robert Losiak