fight for a song: Karol Szymanowski

Karol Szymanowski:Songs of a Princess from a Fairy Tale Op.31Kurpian Songs Op.58

Katarzyna Oleś-Blacha SopranVioletta Fluda-Tkaczyk piano

Karol Szymanowski's “Songs of the Princess from a Fairy Tale” belong to a group of works customarily combined with his fascination with the Orient. The lyrics were written by the composer's sister, Zofia Szymanowska, creating the character of a fairytale princess longing for love. However, unlike other works by Szymanowski from that period, it is difficult to find concrete references to Eastern culture or poetry in the poems themselves. The title character could come from almost any fairy tale.

More important than geographical exoticism here is the inner world: dream, longing and amorous expectation. “Orient” thus becomes not so much a concrete place as a space for imagination, allowing one to move away from everyday life and enter a reality more sensual and fantastic. This ambiguity constitutes one of the most interesting aspects of the cycle. Exoticism does not serve to represent the real East, but to create a world that exists outside a specific time and place — a fairytale space in which emotions and imagination remain the most important.

“Twelve Kurpiowski Songs” Op. 58, composed between 1930 and 1932, is the last vocal cycle of Karol Szymanowski. The composer drew on the melody from the collection of Fr Władysław Skierkowski “Kurpiów Forest in Song”, preserving their characteristic severity, dialect and ornamentation, but not treating them as folklore quotes. Folk melodies become the starting point for a very personal harmonic language and a sophisticated piano part. Thanks to this, this music seems at the same time archaic and modern, restrained in measures and extremely emotionally intense.

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Katarzyna Oleś-Blacha photo by Myszkowski Jedo