Music post-1937 | On Polish Music

• New CD Note (Lutosławski vol.5/Chandos)

Thursday, 21 February 2013 Leave a comment

Lutosławski: Orchestral Works IV is the fifth Chandos CD in the BBCSO/Gardner series. I hope that there will be a sixth to include Livre pour orchestre (1968) and Mi-parti (1976) and a selection from Musique funèbre (1958), Jeux vénitiens (1961), Novelette (1979) and the Double Concerto (1980). Then the series will have included all Lutosławski’s major symphonic and vocal pieces. It’s been a fantastic series. The first CD included the Concerto for Orchestra, which on Polish Radio was recently voted the best recording of this popular work. I wrote an account of the programme discussion on 20 January: Gardner/BBC SO top Polish Radio poll.

Here’s the link to my booklet note for Lutosławski: Orchestral Works IV, or you can scroll the CD NOTES tab above.

Filed under Audio, Lutosławski, Music Dissemination, Music post-1937 Tagged with BBC SO, Chandos, Edward Gardner, Lutosławski, Michael Collins, Tasmin Little

• WL100/21: Funeral and Homily, 16.02.94

Saturday, 16 February 2013 Leave a comment

It was Ash Wednesday, 1994. I had not gone specially to Warsaw for Lutosławski’s funeral on 16 February; I had arrived a week earlier on a pre-planned research trip. But I could not stay away from Powązki Cemetery. My recollections are slender, my few photographs, for what they are worth, rather remote. Those were the days before digital photography, my camera had a poor zoom, and it didn’t seem right to photograph those present at close quarters (how customs have changed in less then 20 years).

Funeral

As you would expect, it was a cold day, but not snowbound as on my recent visit to the grave on the centenary of his birth. Lutosławski had been cremated (there was at that stage only one crematorium in Poland – in Poznań – and the Roman Catholic church had an ambivalent attitude to cremation, to say the least). I got to the cemetery early, before the mass in the chapel. I located the grave, which was squeezed in next to that of Witold Rowicki, the conductor who commissioned Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra in 1950. I was intrigued to see that a full-size grave had been dug, a couple of feet deep, lined with bricks and half covered-over with curved concrete panels.

The chapel at the edge of the cemetery, inside the three-metre perimeter wall, was packed and stuffy. The family wanted the minimum of fuss, with only one oration (translated below). Stefania Woytowicz, who had been one of the great Polish sopranos and a passionate advocate of new Polish music, gave a less than steady account of the early Lacrimosa. I decided to move outside. Eventually, the funeral party emerged past an array of wreaths. Lutosławski’s stepson carried the simple wooden casket (to the left of the wreaths in the photo below).

It was a circuitous route to the graveside. A soldier carried the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honour, which had been awarded to Lutosławski shortly before he died.

I found myself standing the other side of the grave from the family. Lutosławski’s stepson, Marcin Bogusławski, climbed into the narrow opening to place Lutosławski’s casket on the grave’s floor (not the easiest of tasks). Lutosławski’s widow Danuta looked terribly frail. She was heard to say: “Happy Rowicka, that she died straight after her husband!” (she must have glanced to her right and seen the inscription on the adjacent grave of Rowicki and his wife, who died within weeks of each other in 1989). Danuta Lutosławska died less than three months after her husband, on 23 April 1994.

I returned a day or two later to see the grave, now covered in a mound of earth.

Homily

The homily at Lutosławski’s funeral was given by Father Wiesław Niewęgłowski. It was reproduced at the end of Tadeusz Kaczyński’s Lutosławski. Życie i muzyka (Warsaw: Sutkowski, 1994), 237-8. The translation is mine.

We have come here to say farewell to Witold Lutosławski, who is going on a long journey. Among his incessant travels around the world, this is the last. The final stop the house where there are many mansions – eternity. He has left us citizens of the world, while simultaneously being a faithful son of the Polish homeland. An eminent artist, a great composer, and above all a man of integrity.

He was born during the winter in Warsaw. And in Warsaw he also died on a winter day. A graduate of the Warsaw Conservatory. Before he knew what success was, he experienced deprivation. During the years of occupation he earned his living playing the piano in a few cafés in the capital city. During martial law, he took the side of society.

An artist of great talent. He created his own musical language. A unique art. Already during his lifetime he was seen as a classic of the twentieth century. His works entered the treasure-house of world musical culture. They are of permanent and universal value. He was aware of his gift, but also the responsibility for these gifts entrusted to him. Which is why he once said, “Talent is a good entrusted. And with this good I need to do something wise and noble. Talent must be given back to people. It is the duty of the artist”. These talents he multiplied and generously gave to the world. Inspired, but also hard-working, he repeated after Tchaikovsky: “Inspiration does not visit the lazy”.

We know how he avoided publicity. He was self-effacing. But the world appreciated him – he was presented with honorary degrees by many renowned universities, many distinguished prizes and decorations. A great talent, heart and spirit. Open to people, kindly, independent and steadfast. Totally elegant and calm, he was a free man. But his freedom, both as an artist and as a man, created a harmonious whole. He was a person of clear choices. Which is why he was seen as an unquestioned authority, not only musically but also morally.

He leaves on the day when at Church people pour ashes on their heads, saying an old truth: remember man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return. A funeral ceremony on Ash Wednesday in a way doubly proclaims the truth about life. Europe, as a result of strenuous efforts in the field of philosophy and culture, has sponsored an anthropological reduction of people. The latest proposed model according to the conception of the West is a man devoid of the spiritual dimension, a man crippled. Today’s European man is conceived of as an irreligious man. But is it possible to limit him and his thinking space on the horizon of eternity? As you know, unbelief is the idea only of white, European man. Atheism in the cultures of other continents is an unknown phenomenon. Today’s ceremony has revealed the need for the Absolute. It shows that, alongside mental activity, the spiritual element, humility and realism are necessary for every climate.

Remember, man, that you are dust and to dust you shall return – this sentence is not uttered to arouse fear. Dust does not evoke a symbol but reality. Man is a transient being. But he is the only being who the inevitability of his own death knows. The ritual of the ash and the ritual of the funeral, however, proclaim the truth not about death, but about life. From the time of Christ, the insignificance of man is filled with the infinite, death brings life – like the chrysalis of a butterfly. As the ash fertilises the earth and thus becomes a source of new life during the following spring, so the ash, which is man, sown in the ground with Christ, may have its own spring.

In this liturgy, we ask God for this eternal spring for Witold Lutosławski. We heard in today’s reading from the Letters of St Paul, that Man does not live for himself, but for Christ. Man does not live for himself, but for people with whom Jesus identifies himself. Our recently deceased brother Witold fulfilled this truth in his service as an artist, in his service as a Christian. May his actions intercede for him with God, and that will be a sign for how we must go.

Przyszliśmy tutaj, aby pożegnać Witolda Lutosławskiego, który udaje się w daleką drogę. Wśród jego bezustannych podróży po świecie – ta jest ostatnią. Kóncowym przystankiem dom, w którym mieszkań jest wiele – wieczność. Odchodzi od nas obywatel świata, a jednocześnie wierny syn polskiej ojczyzny. Wybitny artysta, wielki kompozytor, a przede wszystkim człowiek prawy.

Urodził się podczas zimy w Warszawie. I w Warszawie też umarł w zimowy dzień. Absolwent Konserwatorium Warszawskiego. Zanim dowiedział się czym jest sukces, poznał smak niedostatku. W latach okupacji zarobkował grą na fortepianie, w kilku kawiarniach stołecznego miasta. W stanie wojennym opowiedział się po stronie społeczeństwa.

Artysta wielkiego talentu. Stworzył własny język muzyczny. Sztukę niepowtarzalną. Już za życia postrzegano go jako klasyka XX wieku. Jego dzieła weszły do skarbca światowej kultury muzycznej. Są wartością stałą i uniwersalną. Miał świadomość własnego obdarowania, ale i odpowiedzialności za powierzone mu dary. Dlatego kiedyś powiedział: “Talent to dobro powierzone. I z tym dobrem trzeba coś mądrego i szlachetnego zrobić. Talent trzeba oddać ludziom. Jest to obowiązek artysty”. Owe talenty mnożył i hojnie rozdawał światu. Natchniony, ale i pracowity – powtarzał za Czajkowskim: “natchnienie nie nawiedza leniwych”.

Wiemy, jak unikał rozgłosu. Był skromny. Ale świat go docenił – ofiarowano mu doktoraty honoris causa wielu renomowanych uczelni, wiele znakomitych nagród i orderów. Wielki talentem, sercem i duchem. Otwarty na ludzi, życzliwy, niezależny i niezawodny. Pełen elegancji i spokoju, był człowiekiem wolnym. Ale jego wolność i jako artysty, i jako człowieka, tworzyła harmonijną całość. Był osobą jasnych wyborów. Dlatego postrzegano go jako nie kwestionowany autorytet nie tylko muzyczny, ale i moralny.

Odchodzi w dniu, kiedy w Kościele sypie się ludziom na głowę popiół, mówiąc starą prawdę: pamiętaj człowiecze, że prochem jesteś i w proch się obrócisz. Pogrzebowa ceremonia w Środę Popielcową jakby podwójnie głosi prawdę o życiu. Europa w wyniku usilnych zabiegów na terenie filozofii i kultury zafundowała ludziom redukcję antropologiczną. Proponowany najnowszy model według koncepcji Zachodu – to człowiek pozbawiony wymiaru duchowego, człowiek okaleczony. Dzisiejszy człowiek europejski pomyślany jest jako człowiek niereligijny. Ale czy można zamknąć go i przestrzeń jego myśli na horyzonty wieczności? Jak wiecie, niewiara jest pomysłem jedynie człowieka białego, europejskiego. Ateizm w kulturach innych kontynentów jest zjawiskiem nieznanym. Dzisiejsza ceremonia odsłania potrzebę Absolutu. Ukazuje, że obok aktywności umyśłowej potrzebny jest także każdemu klimat i pierwiastek duchowy, pokora, realizm.

Pamiętaj człowiecze, że prochem jesteś i w proch się obrócisz – to zdanie nie jest wypowiadane ku wzbudzaniu lęku. Proch nie przywołuję symbolu, ale rzeczywistość. Człowiek jest istotą przemijającą. Ale jest także jedyną istotą, która o nieuchronności swej śmierci – wie. Obrzęd popielcowy i obrzęd pogrzebowy głoszą jednak prawdę nie o śmierci, ale o życiu. Od czasu Chrystusa znikomość człowieka wypełniona jest nieskończonością, śmierć wydaje życie – jak poczwarka motyla. Jak popiół użyźnia ziemię i tym samym staje się przyczyną nowego życia podczas kolejnej wiosny; tak posiany z Chrystusem w ziemię proch, którym jest człowiek, może mieć swoją wiosnę.

O tę wieczną wiosnę dla Witolda Lutosławskiego prosimy Boga podczas tej liturgii. Słyszeliśmy w czytanym dzisiaj liście św. Pawla, że Człowiek nie żyje dla siebie, ale dla Chrystusa. Człowiek nie żyje dla siebie, ale dla ludzi, z nimi utożsamia sź Jezus. Świętej pamięci nasz brat Witold wypełnił tę prawdę swą służbą artysty, służbą chrześcijanina. Niech jego czyny orędują za nim u Boga, a dla nas będą znakiem, jak iść mamy.

Filed under Lutosławski, Music post-1937, Warsaw, WL100 Tagged with funeral, funeral homily, Lutosławski, WL100

• WL100/20: Dance Preludes, **15.02.55

Friday, 15 February 2013 Leave a comment

Here are a couple of previously unrevealed facts about this popular piece for clarinet and piano. The premiere of Lutosławski’s five Dance Preludes took place on 15 February 1955, although one of the set (unidentified) had already been played at a Polish Composers’ Union concert on 24 April 1954.

• In May 2002, I was doing some research in Poland when I came across some interesting information about the background of Dance Preludes which widens the chronology of its composition. Here’s a sample:

Lutosławski evidently wrote a single Preludium taneczne in 1953. In a letter to him dated 5 December 1953, his publisher wrote:

‘… we ask a kind favour of you: either agree to the publication of your one “Dance Prelude for clarinet and piano”, or write to us by the N. Year as to how things are with your plans for another two preludes – we would be very pleased with that.’
‘… zwracamy się do Ciebie z gorącą prośbą: Albo zgódź się na wydanie Twojego jednego “Preludium tanecznego na klarnet et fortepian”, albo napisz nam do N. Roku, tak, jak to jest w Twoich zamierzeniach jeszcze dwa preludia, z czego bardzo cieszylibyśmy się.’

Lutosławski replied by sending just the one prelude on 31 January 1954; this was almost certainly the one played in April 1954. It eventually became the last in the set. I have found no further correspondence about preludes in the plural until after the premiere in 1955.

• When exploring the musical and bibliographical contents of his house in September 2002 (with permission of the family), I discovered a folder marked ‘Mat. ludowe’ (Folk Mat[erials].), tucked away in a cupboard in the attic room. Among a wealth of MS examples in Lutosławski’s handwriting, there were several headed ‘Preludia tan.’ (Dan. Preludes), with tunes copied from another source. Here’s the tune at the top of the list (it’s not been seen before; photograph taken in poor light on site), and it provided him with the initial theme for the first of the Dance Preludes.

The insertion of differently-metred bars is characteristic of many Polish folksongs. The connection between the source and the prelude is clear (the tempo is greatly increased), but the straightforward yet imaginative way in which Lutosławski makes a paragraph out of a (relatively) simple tune through extension, repetition and a varied underpinning is a stroke of genius.

Wl PT:1a

Filed under Lutosławski, Music Dissemination, Music post-1937, Music Publishing, WL100 Tagged with Dance Preludes, Lutosławski, WL100

• WL100/19: ‘Lutosławski live’, 12-19.02.93

Tuesday, 12 February 2013 Leave a comment

Twenty years ago today, ‘Lutosławski live‘ took over the concert halls of Manchester in celebration of the Polish composer’s 80th birthday two weeks earlier. The festival was the brainchild of the British composer, John Casken, who had known Lutosławski since the early 1970s. ‘Lutosławski live‘ placed his music within the context of composers old and new, with Casken and James Macmillan featuring as both composers and speakers and, in the case of MacMillan, as conductor too. Lutosławski had hotfooted it back from Los Angeles, where he had just conducted the world premiere of his Fourth Symphony (5 February 1993).

The Lutosławski works performed in Manchester were: Variations on a Theme of Paganini (1941), Recitative e Arioso (1951), Concerto for Orchestra (1954), Dance Preludes (1954), Dance Preludes (1954/59), Jeux vénitiens (1961), String Quartet (1964), Preludes and Fugue (1972), Mi-parti (1976), Grave (1981), Mini-Overture (1982), Symphony no.3 (1983), Chain 1 (1983), Partita (1984), Chain 3 (1986), Piano Concerto (1988) and Slides (1988).

My recollection is of a wonderfully friendly event, with musicians drawn from the RNCM, the Allegri and Lindsay string quartets, the London Sinfonietta, the BBC PO and the Hallé. Lutosławski himself conducted in two of the concerts. I also have very fond memories of a relaxed post-concert supper with him, John Casken and others in a downtown Italian restaurant. Good times. Oh, I’ve only just noticed that I was quoted on the leaflet. There’s observation for you.

Filed under Lutosławski, Music Dissemination, Music post-1937, Other Festivals, WL100 Tagged with James MacMillan, John Casken, Lutosławski live, Manchester, WL100

• WL100/18: Notebook, 12 February 1961

Tuesday, 12 February 2013 Leave a comment

Lutosławski on the brink

The period which I have been going through for a long time already (a few years) has been uninteresting. It has been a period of intensive explorations into expressive devices that suit me. This has inevitably led to a state where, for the most part, these work in poorly mastered, unfamiliar ways. In this state, one loses one’s sure hand, loses accuracy, loses balance, loses authoritativeness and full responsibility for the outcome. To this must be added that these investigations proceed slowly, that they bring few lasting gains. The result of this state of affairs is the fact that the works of this period (orchestral wks from 59/60, and also a work for chamb. orch. from 1961), if going by their own intrinsic value, stand certainly lower than some of my previous pieces (Conc[erto for orchestra]., M[usique]. F[unèbre]., [Five] Songs to Iłł[akowicz].). For me personally they still have greater value than those works because they are leading to something, are preparing something, are facilitating something which will be much more my own. I will be able to write these pieces when the devices now being developed are to me as mastered, familiar and malleable as was the ‘late tonality’ in the Concerto for Orch.

Okres, który od dłuższego już czasu przeżywam (parę lat) jest nieciekawy. Jest to okres wzmożonych poszukiwań odpowiednich dla mnie środków wyrazu. Prowadzi to nieuchronnie do stanu, w którym operuje się w dużym procencie środkami źle opanowanymi, mało znanymi. Gubi się w tym stanie pewność ręki, gubi się celność, gubi się równowagę, gubi się autorytatywność i pelnię odpowiedzialności za dzieło. Do tego dodać należy, że te poszukiwania postępują wolno, że niewiele przynoszą trwałych zdobyczy. Rezultatem tego stanu rzeczy jest fakt, że utwory tego okresu (utw. orkiestrowe z lat 59/60, a także utwór na ork. kam. z 1961), jeśli wziąć pod uwagę ich oderwaną od wszystkiego innego wartość, stoją na pewno niżej od niektórych poprzednich moich utworów (Konc., M. ż., Pieśni do Iłł.). Dla mnie osobiście mają jednak wartość większą niż tamte, ponieważ prowadzą do czegoś, przygotowują coś, ułatwiają coś, co będzie o wiele bardziej moje własne. Będę mógł te utwory napisać wtedy, kiedy opracowywane teraz środki staną się dla mnie tak opanowane, znane, podatne, jak to było z “późna tonalnością” w Koncercie na ork.

Witold Lutosławski, 12 February 1961 [my translation]

This entry in Lutosławski’s creative notebook is fascinating. Firstly, it shows that he is still battling to find his own voice on a technical level. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems obvious that he was tussling with the practicalities of the aleatory (chance) procedures that he had first encountered in John Cage’s Concert for Piano (1958) in a radio broadcast. This life-changing moment occurred, by his own account, sometime in 1960.

The orchestral pieces that Lutosławski mentions from 1959-60 are what he subsequently called Three Postludes. He completed them as follows, but not in the order in which they were published (my primary source here is the German musicologist, Martina Homma):

No.1 (14 September 1958)
No.3 (4 April 1959)
No.2 (27 August 1960)

There is no record of any other work being completed during the next six months, until he started to finalise three movements from Jeux vénitiens, the chamber orchestra piece from 1961 mentioned above. These three movements were premiered in Venice on 24 April 1961. Two of them were then radically overhauled and a third movement added in time for the full premiere in Warsaw on 16 September 1961. The Jeux vénitiens chronology works out as follows:

Mvt.4 (7 March 1961; rev. 11 August 1961)
Mvt.2 (28 March 1961)
Mvt.1 (5 April 1961; rev. 29 August 1961)
Mvt.3 (21 August 1961)

One may only conjecture what was happening in Lutosławski’s head and in his studio between 27 August 1960 and 7 March 1961. It seems probable that it was during September-December 1960 that he heard Cage’s Concert for Piano. Evidently, on 12 February 1961 he was still nowhere near a satisfactory solution to his quest for new expressive devices. His search almost certainly revolved around how to animate his twelve-note harmonic language (already evident in Five Songs, Musique funèbre and the ‘orchestral wks from 59/60’) with ‘unmastered, unfamiliar’ rhythmic aleatorism. His first public attempts, aired in Venice, were quickly revised for the Warsaw premiere (I explored these issues in detail in 2001).

What is fascinating about the diary extract above is the clarity of Lutosławski’s mind about the value of this experimentation, even though his technical efforts were still in some disarray and he was far from finding the solutions that suited him. But he knew that the direction in which he was heading was the right one, and he was determined to follow his instincts through.

Filed under Lutosławski, Music post-1937, WL100 Tagged with diary, Gry weneckie, Jeux vénitiens, Lutosławski, notebook, Three Postludes, WL100, Zapiski, zeszyt

• Different and Indifferent

Thursday, 7 February 2013 4 Comments

I was not going to write anything today, the anniversary of Witold Lutosławski’s death nineteen years ago. That evening, I recall going into a BBC studio in London and taking part in a quite substantial (45-minute?) tribute along with John Casken and Charles Bodman Rae. The following day, I was already scheduled to fly to Warsaw, where I was able to attend Lutosławski’s funeral just over a week later.

I have just experienced, however, a bizarre acoustic phenomenon, courtesy of Polish Radio 2 (counterpart to BBC Radio 3). It was a live performance from its Witold Lutosławski Studio, as part of the Lańcuch X (Chain 10) festival, of his Cello Concerto. Nothing strange in that, you might think. But this was an experimental rethinking by a group of seven Polish musicians in which the orchestral parts were shared between two pianists, two percussionists and two people involved with live electronics, and the cello soloist Andrzej Bauer. Bauer has long been a powerful advocate of the Cello Concerto (he performed it under the composer’s baton and his later interpretation on the Naxos label is among the best). Bauer has also been at the forefront of reinterpreting Lutosławski, notably in his Lutosphere project with the jazz pianist Leszek Możdzer and the DJ m.bunio.s. Here’s a sample of Lutosphere, based on the theme from the first movement of Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

On this occasion, Bauer played the straight man to the other five musicians. He played the solo part ‘as is’. Borrowing the titles of the two movements from the Second Symphony, the ensemble prefaced the ‘Direct’ Cello Concerto with a ‘Hésitant’ improvisation that excluded the soloist. This raised all sorts of questions regarding the meaning of the cello’s repeated indifferente D naturals with which the concerto begins. Instead, here there was a back story, as it were, in the shape of some 25 minutes of largely unrelated material.

‘Hésitant’ began with a sustained D, which disappeared after a few minutes. In a series of waves, with two main climaxes, the ensemble gathered pace, volume and density, then evaporated, plunged the registral depths and regained the heights some 20 minutes later in cloudbursts of excited activity. Much of this was treated electronically, along with prepared piano sounds and other percussive effects. On air, it wasn’t always clear where the boundaries lay between acoustic and electronic sound sources. The improvisation was imaginative and exploratory.

The soloist’s open repeated Ds emerged from the dying embers of ‘Hésitant’ and ‘Direct’ had begun – four minutes of solo cello. I was interested to hear how the ‘arrangement’ of the orchestral parts would work. This had been done by the composer Cezary Duchnowski, who had also prepared the ‘electroacoustic sound layer’. Sadly, at least over the internet, the experiment failed more than it succeeded. The main problematical area was how to match the precision and sonic impact of live orchestral instruments. Maybe it was better in the hall, but the ‘wind’ textures were often muggy and the ‘brass’ timbres consistently feeble.

The trumpet intervention at Fig.1 was anything but the ‘angry’ intervention of Lutosławski’s original. Subsequent brass interruptions, especially those at the end of the four Episodes, were plain limp, so Lutosławski’s concept of drama through music never properly materialised. Even the highly expressive coming together of cello and strings for the concluding passage of the Cantilena was timbrally mismatched. The fiercest interruption of all, at the beginning of the Finale, was without any bite, volume or density whatsoever. You can imagine, therefore, that there was no real confrontation as the Finale progressed, no rhythmic edge. I already feared that the hammering orchestral chords at Fig.133 would not do the job of crushing the soloist. They didn’t even come close.

I wish that I could report otherwise, as I was looking forward to this with great excitement. As I said, it may have been different in the hall, where the sound diffusion may well have created a much stronger impression of the arrangement. But it is surely not beyond the bounds of technological potential to reconfigure the orchestral parts – but not necessarily to ape them – so that the cellist has a real sonic opponent, something to play with and against. As it was, he was far more alone than the composer intended. Whether Lutosławski would have approved of this revised sound-world I’m not sure. In any event, I think he would have wanted it to have had more ‘orchestral’ impact and immediacy than was evident on air tonight.

Filed under Concerts, Lutosławski, Music Dissemination, Music post-1937, Other Festivals, Radio Tagged with Andrzej Bauer, Cello Concerto, Lutosławski, Łancuch X

• WL100/17: Notebook, 6 February 1959

Wednesday, 6 February 2013 Leave a comment

Lutosławski as parachutist

‘Emulating’ [lit. ‘Repeating’ after someone] is only worth it when what one does is even better than the model. There are obvious examples: Mozart and the Mannheimers, Bach and Pachelbel, Vivaldi etc.. One has to have great self-confidence to ’emulate’. If one does not have this, it is necessary to find things that have not yet been discovered. Today there are no great ‘synthesizers’, ‘blenders’, no material to emulate. What scouts, ‘advance troops’, ‘parachutists’ discover is slight material with which little can be done. Each must seek his own nourishment, condemned to ‘the poverty of avant-gardism’. He must be his own ‘parachutist’, and then also ‘occupy the ground’ himself.

‘Powtarzać’ po kimś warto tylko wtedy, kiedy robi się to samo lepiej niż model. Przykłady oczywiste: Mozart i mannheimczycy, Bach – Pachelbel, Vivaldi etc. Trzeba dużej pewności siebie, żeby ‘powtarzać’. Jeśli się jej nie ma, trzeba wynajdywać rzeczy jeszcze niewynalezione. Dziś nie ma wielkich ‘syntetyków, ‘zlewaczy’, nie ma materiału do powtarzania. To, co wynajdują szperacze, ‘szpica’, ‘spadochroniarze’ – to jest wiotka materia, z której niewiele da się zrobić. Każdy musi sam sobie szukać pokarmu, skazany jest na ‘nędzę awangardowości’. Musi sam być ‘spadochroniarzem’, a później również sam ‘obsadzać teren’.

Witold Lutosławski, 6 February 1959 [my translation]

Filed under Lutosławski, Music post-1937, WL100 Tagged with diary, Lutosławski, notebook, WL100, Zapiski, zeszyt

• WL100/16: Philharmonia Festival, 2-12.02.89

Saturday, 2 February 2013 Leave a comment

The Philharmonia’s festival to mark the centenary of the birth of Witold Lutosławski (http://woven-words.co.uk) is not the first time that the orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen have celebrated his music. They also marked his 75th birthday with a series of four concerts, although for some reason these were given shortly after Lutosławski’s 76th birthday, starting on this date, 2 February, in 1989. Very curious.

Lutosławski shared the conducting with Salonen and also gave a pre-concert talk. His works were Symphony no.2 (1967), Livre pour orchestre (1968), Cello Concerto (1970), Les Espaces du sommeil (1975), Double Concerto (1980), Symphony no.3 (1983) and Chain 3 (1986). Again, his music was partnered by that of 20th-century composers with whom he felt an affinity – Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, Roussel and Stravinsky – alongside works by Beethoven, Brahms and Haydn.

Filed under Concerts, Lutosławski, Music Dissemination, Music post-1937, Other Festivals, WL100 Tagged with 1989, Lutosławski, Philharmonia, Salonen

• A Brush with Lutosławski

Friday, 1 February 2013 Leave a comment

I’ve just been to Warsaw to celebrate Lutosławski’s centenary. I’ve returned with commemorative books, CDs, a pencil, a medal and a brush, with the promise of an IoS app to follow. More importantly, I’ve experienced an enlightening and inspiring five days with friends old and new, all gathered together by the music and memories of one man. It was a bit surreal: we were there, but he wasn’t, except in his music. I felt his absence keenly, even though it’s almost 19 years since he died.

Day 1 (Thursday, 24 January)

It had all been a bit hairy getting from Cornwall to Warsaw. Yesterday, I made it to Poole for a performance by Johannes Moser, the Bournemouth SO and Kirill Karabits of Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto. Moser is playing it a dozen times or so this year and his was a vibrant and alert reading. We also had a great discussion in a pre-concert event with Tom Hutchinson of the RPS (who had commissioned the work and was on the eve of its own 200th-anniversary celebrations) and I’m looking forward to poring over the score with Moser in the near future. But neither threats of snow and ice nor broken-down trains got in the way of my safe arrival in Poland today to snow and minus temperatures that back home would be regarded as a national catastrophe.

The pre-centenary concert was given mainly by the young generation of Polish and visiting artists in the Royal Palace, as the opening concert of this year’s Łańcuch X (Chain 10) festival built around Lutosławski’s music. There were fine readings of Musique funèbre, Grave (with Marcin Zdunik) and Paroles tissées (with the Dutch tenor Marcel Beekman) by the AUKSO CO under Marek Moś. A special treat were the readings from Paul Valéry, Henri Michaux and Cyprian Kamil Norwid by one of Poland’s most famous actresses, Maja Komorowska. She was in the very first Polish film that I ever saw, Zanussi’s Zycie rodzinne (Family Life).

An unexpected part of the evening was the presentation of a specially minted medal by the Witold Lutosławski Society not only to Lutosławski’s stepson and wife, Marcin and Gabriela Bogusławski, but also to about a dozen other guests. These included the Polish conductor Jan Krenz, long a champion of Lutosławski’s music, Polish writers such as Mieczysław Tomaszewski (who was at the PWM publishers when Lutosławski’s career really took off in the early 1950s) and Michał Bristiger. Both Tomaszewski and Bristiger are in their 90s and as sprightly in body and spirit as ever. Younger Polish writers also honoured included Danuta Gwizdalanka and the composer Krzysztof Meyer, whose joint two-volume study of Lutosławski’s life and music is being issued in a single, German-language volume later this year, and Zbigniew Skowron, whose editorial and archival work has done much to bring Lutosławski’s music and thought to non-Polish readers.

Non-Polish recipients included the German musicologist Martina Homma, the Russian musicologist Irina Nikolska, the American composer and author of the first major study of Lutosławski’s life and work, Steven Stucky, and two British writers: Charles Bodman Rae and myself. James Rushton of Chester Music accepted the medal as Managing Director of Lutosławski’s publishers, Chester Music. The following day, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Antoni Wit also received the medal on the stage of the Philharmonic Hall at the end of the opening centenary concert. The Poles are good at this type of recognition and we were all honoured and touched by the generosity of the gesture.

Day 2 (Friday, 25 January)

Today was the big day and a packed programme for the visiting guests. First stop was the Chopin Museum, where we were shown a recently purchased autograph of Chopin’s Waltz in F minor. Krzysztof Meyer inspected it closely.

The Director of the Chopin Institute Artur Szklener and the Senior Curator of the Chopin Museum Maciej Janicki were our expert guides. Janicki then took us through the interactive displays and artefacts installed in the museum. We could also glimpse a more recent tribute to Chopin in the shape of a giant mural on a nearby building. You can see the even more giant and infinitely less prepossessing national stadium on the other side of the River Vistula.

At lunchtime we moved across from the reconstructed Ostrogski Palace that houses the Chopin Museum to the ultra-modern facilities of the National Frederic Chopin Institute. We weren’t there for Chopin, but for a press conference to launch a smartphone app: Witold Lutosławski: Guide to Warsaw. As I write, it’s available only on Android; the IoS version is awaiting approval from Apple.

I was impressed, not only by the way in which the creators outlined their intentions – principal among the people involved were (from left to right above) Grzegorz Michalski, President of the Lutosławski Society, Danuta Gwizdalanka, Kamila Stępień-Kutera and Artur Szklener – but also how good the application looked. It’s been designed by the Kraków-based company NETIGEN and project-managed by a former music student Kamil Ściseł.

The app has English and Polish versions, numerous photos, spoken and written texts, and it guides the user through Lutosławski’s Warsaw, visiting over fifty locations. The team decided early on not to include music so as to keep the app manageable. It seemed from the demonstration to be both handsome and user-friendly and should prove to be a major source of interest to a wide spectrum of people around the world. It will be much cheaper for those with foreign SIM cards to use at home than on the streets of Warsaw, but it is designed to inform users who are following Lutosławski’s footsteps either on the ground or virtually.

From the press confeence it was on to Warsaw’s Powązki Cemetery, where Lutosławski was buried on 16 February 1994. Most of us had been there many times before, not least because there are the graves of so many famous creative artists in its grounds. Lutosławski’s grave is close by those of many other musicians. It was getting pretty cold by mid-afternoon and the snow had piled up. Earlier visitors had, however, cleared the gravestone of Lutosławski and his wife Danuta and it was already covered in huge wreaths.

There was little room in the space between the rows of graves to fit everyone in. Krzysztof Meyer adjusted the wreath ribbons.

Speeches were made by the President of the Polish Composers’ Union Jerzy Kornowicz and by Steven Stucky.

In the photo above, you can see (from left to right) Jerzy Kornowicz, Krzysztof Meyer, Martina Homma and Irina Nikolska. Below, Steven Stucky, Krzysztof Meyer and Danuta Gwizdalanka partly hidden, Mieczysław Tomaszewski, Martina Homma and Irina Nikolska (also partly hidden).

Being a little frivolous by nature, I couldn’t help noticing that the profile of the conductor Stefan Rachoń behind Lutosławski’s grave had been lent a certain Victorian air by the accumulation of snow.

I stepped the other side and was followed by Meyer through the snow drifts between the graves. I then took a final photo of Kornowicz, Stucky and Homma.

The major event on the centenary of Lutosławski birth was the evening’s concert by the Warsaw Philharmonic under Antoni Wit. It was an interesting and in the event a brave choice to open with a piece not by Lutosławski but by one of the younger generation whom Lutosławski helped with scholarships and other funding. Pawel Szymański (b.1954) is arguably the best-known Polish composer of his generation, but he’s been out of the limelight for some time, mainly finishing his opera Qudsja Zaher (premiere, Teatr Wielki, Warsaw, 20 April 2013). His new orchestral piece, Sostenuto, is characteristically oblique, slow-moving (initially) and demanding of concentration. Its main climax approached Lutosławski’s in intensity and it subsided in a similar fashion. Szymański dedicated Sostenuto to Lutosławski, including a brief reference to the latter’s Partita (which I missed) and ended with a veiled reference, also missed, to Brahms’s Piano Concerto no.1. Szymański remains as enigmatic as ever.

Wit’s performance of Lutosławski’s Third Symphony was solid and well-paced, even if it didn’t fully catch fire. The fireworks came with Anne-Sophie Mutter’s performance of Partita-Interlude-Chain 2 in the second half. This is her piece (These are her pieces?) and she gave them all the subtlety and passion that they deserve. The hall was packed and it was great to meet up again with friends like the conductor Wojciech Michniewski (who’s conducting the premiere of Szymański’s opera) and the pianist and composer Zygmunt Krauze.

Day 3 (Saturday, 26 January)

The official celebrations are over for the time being. I decided to stay on for a few days, and today I had two events. The first was completely unrelated to Lutosławski. It was a piano recital by the Hungarian-born, Polish-domiciled Szábolsc Esztényi of music by his friend Tomasz Sikorski (1939-88). Sikorski, a contemporary of Krauze, was one of the most original voices in Polish music, and his strong, repetitive minimalist idiom is as challenging today as it was back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

This recital was being given in the old Królikarnia palace in south Warsaw, which looked picturesque under lamplight, surrounded by deep snow, but was pretty cold inside too. The cause was the launch of two CDs – issued by Bôłt records in association with DUX and Polish Radio among others – of music by Sikorski. Esztényi’s double CD also includes two of his own works (Creative Music no.3 in memoriam Tomasz Sikorski, 1989, and Concerto, 1971). There’s also Presence (2007) by Kasia Głowacka. The other pieces, by Sikorski, are mainly archival – Echoes II (1963), Antiphones (1963), Diario 87 – as well as his Solitude of Sounds (1975). The second CD is by John Tilbury, who plays his own Improvisation for Tomasz Sikorski (2011) alongside Sikorski’s Autograph (1980), Rondo (1984) and Zertstreutes Hinausschauen (1971).

The Bôłt series is a fascinating and inventive mix of archival performances and new interpretations and I’ll be doing a substantial survey of some of its repertoire – around ten CDs – in the near future.

Unfortunately, I was double-booked that night and had the chance to hear only two of the Sikorski pieces in Esztényi’s recital, including Sikorski’s Sonant (1967). I was immediately struck by the correlation between Sikorski’s remorseless, expressionless repetitions and the opening of Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto. I wonder…

I rushed from south to north Warsaw via the magic of the metro, which offered relief from the temperatures which were plummeting towards -21C. I was on my way to an informal supper party at Lutosławski’s house. Unfortunately, I got lost on the way from the Plac Wilsona station and was lucky to find other souls out on the streets who could direct me towards Śmiała 39. I recognised it immediately, although I’d not seen it in the snow before.

The giveaway was the relief plaque on the wall.

The house is now occupied by Lutosławski’s stepson and his wife, who welcomed us all inside with whiskey, wine and good food. It was nice to relax and to be back in this special place. At one point, we were led up to Lutosławski’s studio on the first floor (the lit window on the exterior photograph above), where I had spent three days exploring his books, sketches and scores in September 2002. The arm of the studio containing his desk and main bookshelves (by the lit window) is much as I remember it, whle some of the other bookshelves have been removed or replaced. Sadly, Lutosławski’s 1970 carpet that he bought in London is no more, revealing the clunky parquet flooring which he had covered over for acoustic purposes.

Day 4 (Sunday, 27 January)

Bitterly cold again. A morning trip to visit the newly opened gallery at the National Museum devoted to 20th-century and 21st-century Polish art. It’s really good. The Poles have developed such an extraordinary visual acuity, teamed with a range of symbolism (much of it socio-political), that every item has something intriguing and stimulating to offer. There was Leopold Lewicki’s sculpture Musical Composition (1935), which offered multiple cubist viewpoints.

There were several pieces by Władysław Strzemiński, whose unistic paintings so inspired Krauze’s music in the 1960s. His little piece Cubism – tensions of material structure (1921) was particularly striking.

The period since 1945 was represented by some socialist-realist pieces through to contemporary film and video. If you are going to Warsaw, do visit. I was most thrilled to see in the flesh again Bronisław Linke’s Autobus, about which I have enthused previously in these pages. Close-up (and you can get much closer to the artwork here than in most of the other galleries I go to), this is a stunning, visceral work that has lost none of its power to shock since it was painted just over 50 years ago.

After a family lunch with my friends, it was off to the Lutosławski Studio at Polish Radio for a concert by the Polish Radio SO conducted by Łukasz Borowicz: Lutosławski’s Little Suite in its original version for chamber orchestra, Penderecki’s Piano Concerto in its revised version, and Stravinsky’s Symphony in C. This is a lively orchestra, giving its all to two relatively minor pieces by the Polish composers (I’m afraid that Penderecki’s Piano Concerto is as vacuous and overscored a piece as it was when I heard its Polish premiere in the original version in 2002; others disagree).

Day 5 (Monday, 28 January)

I was back at Polish Radio this afternoon for the press launch of a book on Lutosławski by Andrzej Chłopecki, who died last autumn. It is subtitled ‘Przewodnik po muzyce Witolda Lutosławskiego’ and is available only in Polish. I’ll return in a future post to this rather special guide, to a new photo album and an 8-CD box set of archival recordings also published to mark Lutosławski’s centenary.

My final Lutosławski experience was in the evening’s concert by the Wrocław PO under its conductor Jacek Kaspszyk. The main item was Lutosławski’s Piano Concerto, played by Garrick Ohlsson, who won the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1970. He was still feeling his way into the piece (he’d played it for the first time just two days earlier, but every performer has to start somewhere!) and frankly there was no comparison with Krystian Zimerman’s magical performance in London with the Philharmonia under Esa-Pekka Salonen two days later. In the same way that the Philharmonia celebrations for Lutosławski are pairing him with two of his favourite composers (Debussy and Ravel), the Wrocław PO completed its concert with dynamic performances of Stravinsky’s Firebird suite and Ravel’s La Valse.

And so, as the temperature rose on Tuesday to a balmy 0C, I left Warsaw for London, thoroughly invigorated and grateful to friends old and new for five days of celebration for a composer who has been hugely important to me since I was a student.

Oh, the brush!

The Poles are so imaginative. The Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which along with the Institute of Music and Dance and the Witold Lutosławski Society has brought these events to fruition, decided to give a special present to its guests on Friday evening at the Philharmonic. It looked at first glance like an old-fashioned pencil box.

On opening it, there was a familiar, early photo of Lutosławski working at his piano.

Underneath, inside the box, was a pencil and a mini version of the brush in the photo.

What was it for, you may ask? Clue: Lutosławski worked in pencil, frequently rubbing out and correcting his sketches and scores. And he was a naturally tidy man and disliked mess… I remember seeing a brush on his desk when I was in his studio in 2002, so this resonated with me. What a brilliant gift to bring back home!

Filed under Born 1938-49, Concerts, Lutosławski, Music post-1937, Other Festivals, Visual Arts, Warsaw Tagged with Lewicki, Linke, Lutosławski Centenary, Smiała 39, Strzemiński, Tomasz Sikorski

• WL100/15: Thank-you note, 26 January 1993

Saturday, 26 January 2013 Leave a comment

When I was working at BBC Radio 3, I sent Lutosławski greetings for his 8oth birthday. In his characteristically courteous and meticulous fashion, he replied the following day. He was in San Francisco, en route to Los Angeles, where he conducted the LAPO in the premiere of his Fourth Symphony on 5 February 1993.

Filed under Lutosławski, Music post-1937, WL100 Tagged with Lutosławski, thank-you note 1993, WL100

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