NOSPR/Akiki/Hagner/Alphabet of Feelings

Before the concert, at 6.30 p.m., we invite you to the chamber hall for a meeting with editor Andrzej Sułek (Program 2 of Polish Radio), who will discuss the works performed that evening. Entrance to the lecture is free, to participate in the lecture is entitled to show a subscription card or a ticket to the concert. The lecture will also be broadcast live on YouTube.

William Walton's violin concerto begins in a dream. Dreamy — as the composer noted in the score. The unhurried lyrical melody of the violin accelerates many times later and dynamic storms pass over it, but it remains invariably the core of the work. He even recalls himself in the virtuoso second part, styled in the shape of a South Italian tarantella — probably in honor of the tarantula that bit Walton during the work on the piece. Some people hear more Mediterranean references in the Concerto — it is created in a villa overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, where the composer is taken by Alice Wimborne, his partner. It's no wonder he's being rewarded with a musical “declaration of love” — or so biographer Michael Kennedy claims.

Some also find expressions of affection for their beloved in Schumann's Symphony No. 4 in D minor. It may not be indicated by a serious introduction or a menacing beginning of the scherza, but the whole work is spun by a characteristic motif, called by musicologists “Clara's theme”. The composer was supposed to encode in it the name of his wife, with whom he had married only a few months earlier. This, of course, is a hypothesis, although listening to the romance of the second part, you can get rid of doubts to some extent.

The theme of love for women, present in Juice of Barley — a drunken song used by Anna Clyne — is probably not worth developing. Nevertheless, the melody fits perfectly with the joyful atmosphere of the 18th century promenade concerts in London's amusement gardens, given in the Masquerade.

Piotr Mika (“The Musical Movement”)

More concerts as part of the S1 symphonic concert series.

Performers: NOSPR; Viviane Hagner — violin

Program: Anna Clyne — Masquerade; William Walton — Violin Concerto; Robert Schumann — Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120