• BBC Scottish SO’s ‘Muzyka Polska’

Later this week I’m paying a flying visit to Glasgow to give a pre-concert talk as part of the first night of the BBC Scottish SO’s Muzyka Polska series during its 2012-13 season.  This has been built around next year’s centenary of the birth of Witold Lutosławski and I’m very happy to have been able to play a small part in advising on the choice of repertoire.  With its concentration on Lutosławski and on Szymanowski, the 75th anniversary of whose death falls this year, there was limited room for other major figures (no Baird, Górecki or Serocki, for example).  I’m particularly delighted to see Mieczysław Karłowicz’s Eternal Songs (1906) in the mix and pleased to see that there is music by at least one composer born after World War II, Paweł Szymański’s A Study of Shade (1989).  The ‘big’ night is on 17 January 2013, when six Polish works will be performed.

• Chopin  Piano Concerto no.2 (1829-30)   14 March 2013
• Chopin  Piano Concerto no.1 (1830)   11 October 2012
• Szymanowski  Concert Overture (1905)   11 October 2012
• Karłowicz  Eternal Songs (1906)   15 November 2012
• Szymanowski  Songs of a Fairytale Princess (1915, orch. 1933)   17 January 2013
• Szymanowski  Violin Concerto no.1 (1916)   15 November 2012
• Szymanowski  Songs of an Infatuated Muezzin (1918, orch. 1934)   17 January 2013
• Bacewicz  Concerto for String Orchestra (1948)   25 October 2012
• Lutosławski  Concerto for Orchestra (1954)   17 January 2013
• Penderecki  Polymorphia (1961)   17 January 2013 (Post-Concert Coda)
• Lutosławski  Cello Concerto (1970)   28 February 2013
• Szymański  A Study of Shade (1989)   17 January 2013 (Post-Concert Coda)
• Lutosławski  Symphony no.4 (1992)   17 January 2013

There are two supplementary chamber recitals as Post-Concert Codas: Johannes Moser will play Polish music for cello on 28 February after his performance of Lutosławski’s Cello Concerto, and Garrick Ohlsson will play solo piano pieces by Chopin on 14 March after his performance of Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto.  Ohlsson rocketed to fame after winning the Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1970.  Moser is becoming one of the foremost performers of the Lutosławski.  His Glasgow appearance follows on from a performance in Poole in January with the Bournemouth SO (which premiered the work with Rostropovich in 1970), three performances in Stuttgart the week before he comes to Glasgow, and he then plays it twice in Bilbao in April.

The full schedule for the BBC SSO Muzyka Polska series may be accessed here or by navigating from its home website.