NOSPR/König/ Teztlaff/ Colors not only national

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.

French musicians of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries wanted to compete with the dominance of German music, emphasizing their distinctiveness. Although Claude Debussy was fascinated by the work of the English sailor painter William Turner, and the cover of the first edition of the score featured a reproduction of Hokusai's Great Wave in Kanagawa, his music has come to be called Impressionist. The reason was the radical gesture of placing the timbre of sound in the centre — analogous to the colour spots, the basic means of expression of the French painters of the time.

The revolutionary nature of Debussy's approach fascinated Karol Szymanowski. The Polish composer was looking for ways to free himself from the burden of the German workshop, which held him to a late-Romantic aesthetic. The Violin Concerto is a testament to how quickly he adapted new techniques to his own style. The admiration for the color possibilities of the contemporary orchestra can also be heard in Ottorin Respighi's symphonic poem Roman Fountains, although the artist's workshop was more conservative, associated with studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

“We should not lose organic links with the general human culture, because only at this level can significant, great art, and therefore national music, grow” - emphasized Szymanowski in 1920, when this “Polish core” of the art of the revived state was sought. “Polskość” based his music on deep studies of folklore, which is expressed in the Second Violin Concerto. Relative simplicity, economy of resources — these qualities already proved the aesthetic changes, the arrival of a new taste of the thirties.

Adam Suprynowicz (Polish Radio)

Duration of the concert (including the break): approx. 120 minutes

More concerts as part of the S2 Symphony Concert Series.

Performers: NOSPR; Christian Teztlaff — violin

Program: Ottorino Respighi — Roman Fountains; Karol Szymanowski — 1st Violin Concerto Op. 35; Karol Szymanowski — 2nd Violin Concerto Op. 61; Claude Debussy — The Sea. Three symphonic sketches L. 109