SZYMANOWSKI: Songs with Orchestra

Gadulanka, Jadwiga, Malewicz Madej, Anna, Minkiewicz, Ryszard, Polish State Philharmonic Orchestra, Katowice, Stryja, Karol, Zagorzanka, Barbara

8.553688

Szymanowski set his Hafiz love-songs in 1914, very much in the spirit of German neo-romanticism, exemplified, among other things, in the fashionable versions of Hafiz by Hans Bethge, whose second-hand versions of Chinese poems had served Mahler for his Das Lied van der Erde. The words of the songs paraphrase the verses of the 14th century mystical Persian poet. The cycle was first performed in Paris in June 1925. • The Songs of an Infatuated Muezzin use words by the Polish poet Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz. The original setting for voice and piano was made in 1918 and four of the original six songs were orchestrated in 1934. In common with the Hafiz settings the Songs of an Infatuated Muezzin are characteristic of Szymanowski's great interest in Arab and Persian culture. • Szymanowski chose words by his sister Zofia Szymanowska for the Songs of a Fairy-Tale Princess. Composed in 1915, the settings show the composer's continuing interest in ancient and oriental themes, as well as the influence of Debussy. The orchestral version was made in 1933 and was first performed in Warsaw in 1933 under the direction of Grzegorz Fitelberg with Ewa Bandrowskaurska as soloist. • The Pieśn Roksany (Roxana's Song) is from Szymanowski's successful opera Kró1 Roger (King Roger), in which Queen Roxane, wife of King Roger II of Sicily, espouses the Dionysian religion of the East, brought to her by a shepherd-prophet from India, with whom she falls in love. The libretto of the opera was by the poet and composer Jaroslaw Iwaskiewicz, younger contemporary from the Ukraine, and has obvious connections with the Bacchae of Euripides. • The last group of songs, Holy God, Blessed be that moment and I am and cry (Swiety Boze, Moja piesn wieczorna and Iestem i placze), consists of settings of parts of a poem by Ian Kasprowicz. These were composed in 1902 and published only in 1928. The songs were later arranged for orchestra by Grzegorz Fitelberg and show yet again Szymanowski's very personal idiom, his poetic vision and his command of harmonic and technical resources.

CD x 1

Naxos

2/10/97

730099468824

Diapason: 'Diapason D’or' (2011)