Symphonic concert

symphonic — Krzysztof Urbański with the National Philharmonic Orchestra and Tianyao Lyu in the solo part in Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major.

Krzysztof Urbański (photo by Christian Kaufmann), Tianyao Lyu (photo by Krzysztof Szlęzak)

Can symphonic music tell amazing stories? Many composers answered this question in the affirmative. Mieczysław Karłowicz was so deeply moved by a certain legend — standing in open contradiction to historical facts that he made it the programme of his symphonic poem “Stanisław and Anna Oświęcim” op. 12. The titular characters — siblings separated in childhood and raised apart from each other — meet accidentally on the verge of adulthood and instantly fall in love with each other. However, an unfavorable fate makes love end tragically for both. In the work, one can distinguish musical themes symbolizing, among others, the characters of unhappy lovers and the theme of sinister fate.
With regard to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Concerto in A major KV 488, which will conclude the first part of the programme, we do not have any interpretive guidance from the composer. And they would be very helpful, because the enigma of this piece is that the central part, which has certain features of song, with its deeply melancholic mood contrasts clearly with its extreme passages full of weather and optimism.
The basis of Richard Strauss's symphonic poem Tako je zaratustra op. 30, which we will hear in the second part of the concert, is Friedrich Nietzsche's 1885 philosophical treatise of the same title. It contains a description of the spiritual wanderings of the title character and an interpretation of Nietzschean's concept of the superman. It must be admitted that Strauss's music conveys this ideological program in a very suggestive way. The initial fanfare, which appears in the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's film A Space Odyssey (1968), gained wide reception in popular culture.

Grzegorz Zieziula