Nocturne and Tarantella

In the 20th century, music written in previous centuries was constantly shaping new works, even if its authors sometimes referred to the past with great distances. The concert, during which the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra will be conducted by Magdalena Ziarkowska-Kołacka, will focus precisely on dialogue with old art. Baritone Jakub Borgiel will also perform with the artists. Music will be played by Dorothy Howell, Erwin Schulhoff, Antonio Vivaldi, Tadeusz Baird, Karol Szymanowski and Grażyna Bacewicz.

The evening will begin with Nocturne with the work of Dorothy Howell. The twentieth-century English composer was most often inspired by the work of the Romantics, and the work that artists will reach for is no exception in this regard. Immediately afterwards, the orchestra will present a fragment from the ironic Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett by Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff from 1923 — we will hear a frenetic tarantella. The two-century-old Sinfonia from the opera L'Olimpiade by the Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi is also full of energy — after all, the theme of the whole is the eponymous games. Immediately afterwards, the first Polish composition will be performed this evening. Tadeusz Baird's four love sonnets to the words of William Shakespeare are an attempt to resurrect the spirit of bygone eras. At the same time, the author in this cycle used the modern musical language.

The second part of the concert will be devoted only to local works. Karol Szymanowski and Grażyna Bacewicz are composers who in different periods of the 20th century redefined it in their own ways. The first after the break will be a brilliant and modern work entitled Nocturne and Tarantella. It belongs to the lighter trend in Szymanowski's oeuvre and is a masterful pastis of Italian and gypsy stylizations popular in the nineteenth century. The evening will be completed by the elaboration of the 4th String Quartet Bacewicz. This piece in 1951 brought her triumph at an international competition in Liège, Belgium.