Lebrecht Weekly | Szymanowski: Stabat Mater (Orfeo), Piano works (DG)

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Stabat Mater: ****

Piano works: *****

While Karol Szymanowski is unlikely ever to be voted into the Classic FM Hall of Fame, his stock has risen steadily in the present century, so much so that he can almost be counted now as mainstream. This was never the case in his lifetime, when he suffered the dual disability for a composer of being Polish and gay. On the first count he was compared unfavourably to Chopin, on the second disparagingly to Tchaikovsky. Always his own man, Szymanowski (1882-1937) sounds like no other maker of musical language – as even a cursory listening will attest.

A Stabat Mater of 1926, mourning the death of a beloved niece, is unexpectedly upbeat for the circumstances. Sing in Polish and using two female soloists and a tenor, it conjures more hope than loss in a musical style closer to Janacek than Stravinsky. An Austrian radio performance conducted by Michael Gielen in January 2000 takes the ear down unsuspected forest paths, the treetops twinkling with a promise of redemption. I haven’t heard a more gripping choral work all year.

And then, by the next post, along comes the Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman with a set of Preludes and Mazurkas that retune my ears to a wider spectrum. Szymanowski at the piano is at once playful and deceptive. A touch of Chopin mutates into Skryabin. The second prelude is defiantly hedonistic, the third is Schumann-going-on-Schoenberg. Zimerman makes fresh sense of every crafted phrase. At the moment the eighth prelude is my favourite but it is getting challenged by a pair of mazurkas. This is an album you will return to over and over again.

NL

This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en: Francais (French)

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About Author

Norman Lebrecht is a prolific writer on music and cultural affairs. His blog, Slipped Disc, is one of the most popular sites for cultural news. He presents The Lebrecht Interview on BBC Radio 3 and is a contributor to several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and The Standpoint. Visit every Friday for his weekly CD review // Norman Lebrecht est un rédacteur prolifique couvrant les événements musicaux et Slipped Disc, est un des plus populaires sites de nouvelles culturelles. Il anime The Lebrecht Interview sur la BBC Radio 3 et collabore à plusieurs publications, dont The Wall Street Journal et The Standpoint. Vous pouvez lire ses critiques de disques chaque vendredi.

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  1. Pingback: Five stars for a Polish genius | TraxBeater

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