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orn into Poland’s landed gentry, Karol Szymanowski grew up in a cultured family that encouraged his early signs of genius. Three of his siblings went on to devote themselves to musical careers. The first decade of the new century saw the founding of the Warsaw Philharmonic, after the emerging composer had relocated to that city. In Warsaw he congregated with a group of young Polish composers who echoed the aesthetic ideas of a like-minded movement of writers, painters, sculptors and designers. This so-called “Young Poland” movement essentially promoted a fin-de-siècle philosophy of symbolism and art for art’s sake. Despite the considerable attention Szymanowski attracted at first, the artistic climate of partitioned Poland remained conservative and provincial, an environment that hardly encouraged creative innovation. Szymanowski, in contrast, opened himself up to a cosmopolitan range of influences. These included, in his early works, the spirit of his fellow Pole Chopin and the late Romanticism exemplified by Richard Strauss. But Szymanowski’s outlook began to shift as a result of travels he undertook to Italy, Sicily, North Africa and, on the eve of World War I, to Paris. There Szymanowski broke free of the Straussian spell, falling sway instead to French Impressionism, which he mixed with a very un-French mystical bent more akin to the music of the Russian Alexander Scriabin and the Symbolism of the Young Poland movement. The composer’s Sicilian and North African travels in particular stoked his fascination with the classical past, Greek myth and Sufi Islamic culture. The Violin Concerto No. 1 dates from Szymanowski’s most prolific period, when he fully synthesized this range of influences. Thanks to its dreamy, nocturnal qualities, the Concerto is also frequently associated with the third of his fourth symphonies, written between 1914 and 1916 and known as “The Song of the Night.” (Scored for tenor and chorus, this piece sets the Persian love poetry of Rumi.) Both the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the Symphony No. 3 mark the culmination of this period.
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W H AT TO L I ST E N FO R Though written during World War I, the Violin Concerto seems at a far remove from any sense of anxiety or upheaval. Using a richly ambiguous harmonic language, Szymanowski achieves a shimmering textural clarity within the work’s single-movement span. Its seductively coloristic soundscape mixes influences from early (pre-Rite of Spring) Stravinsky with Ravel-like nuances of orchestration. The signature sound of the piece soon emerges in the airborne voice of the solo violin playing mesmerizing coils of melody. Szymanowski, himself a pianist, collaborated with his friend, Polish violinist Paweł Kochański, for advice on writing for the instrument, both in the Concerto and in other pieces that have a key role in his middle-period style. Kochański, the Concerto’s dedicatee, in fact wrote the lengthy cadenza that is incorporated near the end, and he later partnered again with the composer for his Violin Concerto No. 2 (1933). He was originally set to perform the world premiere in St. Petersburg, but the Bolshevik Revolution interrupted that plan. (The violinist had emigrated to the United States by the time the premiere could be organized in Warsaw, but he gave the first performance in this country.) Kochański’s performance style is thus woven into some of the technical features of the solo writing here, most notably in its tendency to float high in the register, as well as in its colorful glissandi and rich, earthy double stops. The Concerto’s range of thematic material is suitable for extended lyrical excursions, as well as Szymanowski’s focus on vital, dancelike rhythms. Occasional “exotic” touches add to the rhapsodic persona of the violin and the sensuously perfumed atmosphere. The fantasy that unfolds, however, is firmly grounded in the network of themes. Near the end, the soloist takes the spotlight for Kochański’s elaborate cadenza, which in turn precipitates a new perspective, with hints of recapitulation, on musical ideas pondered throughout the piece. As a final gesture, Szymanowski pares down the texture, as if to suggest fragments of a dream left to evaporate in gentle wisps.