Can symphonic music tell extraordinary stories? Many composers have answered this question in the affirmative. One particular legend – though plainly at odds with the historical record – so profoundly moved Mieczysław Karłowicz that he made it the programme of his symphonic poem Stanisław and Anna Oświecim, Op. 12. The protagonists, brother and sister separated in childhood and raised far apart, meet again by chance on the threshold of adulthood and fall instantly in love. Yet fate proves unkind, and their love ends tragically for them both. The score contains a number of distinct musical themes, including motifs associated with the ill-fated lovers and with the ominous force of destiny.

As for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major, K. 488, which concludes the first half of the programme, we possess no interpretative guidance from the composer himself, although it would have been of great help, for one of the work’s enigmas lies in the fact that its central movement, despite its song-like qualities, contrasts sharply in its profoundly melancholy mood with the outer movements, which are full of serenity and optimism.

The second half of the concert will feature Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise of the same title, published in 1885. The work traces the spiritual journey of its eponymous protagonist and expounds Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch. It must be admitted that Strauss’s music conveys this body of ideas with remarkable vividness. Particularly wide recognition in popular culture has been gained by the work’s opening fanfare, which appears, among other places, in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Grzegorz Zieziula