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The Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra not only regularly performs masterpieces of world music literature, but has also been the first to present many of them to the world. Seventy years ago, one of the most colourful symphonic works of the mid-20th century was promoted by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Witold Rowicki. Since its premiere in 1954, Witold Lutosławski's Concerto for Orchestra has regularly returned to the repertoire of this ensemble. Drawing on Mazovian folklore, the work was described by critics as ‘new, yet very familiar’, and in retrospect as ‘the artistic peak of what Polish music of the first half of the 1950s had to offer, without denying the political principles imposed on this music’.
Carl Orff's Carmina burana is a work combining a monumental cast (worthy of a Mahler symphony) with radical minimalism in compositional techniques. This economy of expression, in contrast to the artistic trends dominant in the 1930s, gave Orff's work the status of an icon of musical primitivism. Carmina burana is a cantata based on a selection of poetry from a 13th-century codex, dealing with, among other things, the vicissitudes of fate, love, pleasure and transience, expressed through ecstatic rhythms, beaten out by an elaborate percussion section and simple, memorable ostinato melodies entrusted to soloists and a huge choir.
Bartłomiej Gembicki
