During the second concert of the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic in the current season, we will listen to compositions by Grażyna Bacewicz, Fryderyk Chopin and Become Ocean, a work by a contemporary American composer John Luther Adams. The orchestra will be conducted by Mirian Khukhunaishvili, the first winner of the Ringmann-Jaross Award, a support programme for young musicians founded by Christoph Eschenbach.  

The evening will open with the Overture for symphony orchestra by Grażyna Bacewicz. This short work was created in 1943, but it does not reflect the difficult reality of those times, because, in the words of Stefan Kisielewski, it is a composition “sparkling with life, rushing as if on the wings of rhythmic temperament”. The joyful nature of the music, lively rhythm and excellent orchestration make the work easy to listen to, and at the same time the piece is well contrasted in terms of tempos and moods – the extreme energetic sections surround a lyrical, intimately orchestrated episode. The main motif of the work may bring associations with the “motif of destiny” from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but it is not clear whether this similarity was intentional.

Then, the youthful, radiant Concerto in F minor by Frederic Chopin will sound. Jonathan Fournel will perform as a soloist, whose brilliant career began in 2021 by winning the Grand Prix – Queen Matilda Award at the International Music Competition of Queen Elizabeth of Belgium. Chopin’s work is in the virtuosic brillante style, but virtuosity was never an end in itself for Chopin, but a means to express his most intimate thoughts: “I tell the piano what I would tell you many times,” wrote the composer in a letter to a friend. The most personal part of the concert is the atmospheric Larghetto, inspired by feelings for the singer Konstancja Gładkowska. The finale is an elaborate stylisation of kujawiak, and the striking of the bow stick against the strings of stringed instruments imitates the way of playing of rural musicians.

Become Ocean is a one-movement composition by John Luther Adams, premiered in 2013. He was inspired to write it by the nature of Alaska and Cascadia, i.e. the north-western coast of North America on the border of Canada and the USA. Adams elaborated on the meaning of the work’s title as follows: “Life on Earth first emerged from the sea. As polar ice melts and sea levels rise, we humans face the threat of literally becoming the ocean again.” This work was very positively received – Adams received a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy for it, and in 2019, journalists writing for The Guardian considered it one of the ten most important compositions created so far in the 21st century.