In Witold Lutosławski’s Novelette, five contrasting sections unfold like a hidden story, yet without suggesting any specific narrative. Tensions build through shifting colours and forms before finding their fulfilment in an expansive finale, which balances and completes the musical narrative. An important role is played by the aleatoric technique: Lutosławski precisely notates the musical material, while leaving the performers free to determine its synchronisation, so that each performance takes on a different shape.
Nico Muhly, a versatile American composer, moves with ease between classical music, opera and pop aesthetics. Written for Tine Thing Helseth, his Trumpet Concerto ‘Doom Painting’, whose title refers to depictions of the Last Judgement in medieval frescoes, draws on the archetypal biblical symbolism of trumpets. Its three movements present the instrument first in a ceremonial and processional role, then as the herald of the Last Judgement, and finally as a symbol of joy, often invoked in the Psalms, echoing the words of Psalm 150: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”.
Jean Sibelius’ Pohjola’s Daughter is one of the works inspired by the Finnish epic Kalevala. It tells the story of the hero Väinämöinen, who falls in love with the Daughter of the North and is set a series of tasks that he is unable to accomplish. Sibelius does not recount the story directly, but instead creates an evocative vision: a winter landscape, the movement of a sledge, a moment of revelation, and the dispersal of illusion. It is a myth to be experienced rather than told.
Richard Strauss’ brilliant comic opera Der Rosenkavalier enjoyed enormous success from the very beginning, thanks in no small measure to the exuberant stylisations of the Viennese waltz woven throughout the score. Strauss both ennobles the dance and playfully parodies its conventions. Jokingly alluding to his own surname, he also quotes works by Johann Strauss (how many times must he have had to deny being related...). The orchestral suite, prepared at the initiative of Artur Rodziński (one of the greatest Polish conductors of the twentieth century, associated, among others, with the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic), was first performed in New York in 1944.
Piotr Maculewicz
