MIECZYSLAW KARLOWICZ (1876–1909)

 

Returning Waves, Op. 9

Symphonic poem

Andante –

[Andante] –

Andante assai –

Andantino –

Andante

 

A Sorrowful Tale (Preludes to Eternity)

Lento lugubre – Moderato assai – Tempo I –

Moderato giocoso – Tempo I

 

Episode at a Masquerade, Op. 14

Symphonic poem

Allegro maestoso – Molto agitato – A tempo –

Andante –

Molto lento –

Andante –

Allegro maestoso – Molto agitato – Molto

largemente –

Molto lento

 

BBC Philharmonic

Yuri Torchinsky leader

Gianandrea Noseda

 

Karlowicz finished the first of his six symphonic poems, Returning Waves, in 1904.  With it, he established the melancholy tone characteristic of much of his mature work.  In accompanying notes he spoke of gazing at ‘lifeless ice crystals on the window pane’; a similar image was used by Turgenev, his favourite writer, in An Unhappy Girl, in which unrequited love leads the heroine to take her own life.  Karlowicz’s subject is overwhelmed by memories of a young woman, the happiness she seemed to promise, and her eventual rejection of him.  The composer was undoubtedly inspired in part by his own unhappy experiences.The work consists of an introduction and four main sections, including a waltz of hedonistic abandon with clear echoes of Richard Strauss, the one contemporary composer whom Karlowicz admired.  A Sorrowful Tale, an explicit portrayal of a suicidal state of mind, was composed in 1908, possibly in response to the suicide of the dramatist Jozafat Nowi´ nski, for whom

Kar⁄lowicz had provided incidental music for The White Dove.  Though A Sorrowful Tale continues and ‘completes’ the narrative of Returning Waves, the final words of the programme and the subtitle – Preludes to Eternity – hint at the consolation of Nirvana already expressed in the composer’s Eternal Songs.  In this work there is a move towards a more intense style that verges on the expressionistic, evident in extreme contrasts of tone-colour and the often tonally indeterminate and markedly dissonant idiom.  Work on Episode at a Masquerade started in February 1908 but was left unfinished at Karlowicz’s death.  It was completed only in 1913 by the conductor and composer Grzegorz Fitelberg.  According to Chybi ´ nski, the work concerned an encounter between former lovers in the midst of a ‘riotous, boisterous, Dionysian but banal’ masquerade. Painful recollections of their past love revive, and their feelings for one another are rekindled.  Alas, they are ‘torn apart by the whirlwind of hideous ballroom activity’, and never meet again.

 

Chandos CHAN10298