There are few figures in the history of Polish music as tragic as Mieczysław Karłowicz. His promising career was cut short by his death in an avalanche on the slopes of Mały Kościelec in February 1909. He was only thirty-two years old at the time. One of his notable works will be conducted by Yaroslav Shemet, artistic director of the Silesian Philharmonic and music director of the Baltic Opera in Gdańsk, in a programme including compositions by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Giuseppe Martucci, and Richard Strauss.

Mieczysław Karłowicz's favourite genre was the symphonic poem. Scholars consider his six works of this genre be the pinnacle of Polish symphonic music of the early 20th century. Eternal Songs in rather untypical, as it consists of three movements. The composer did not leave a very extensive commentary on this work, but only two mottos: “Here I stand before you, to complain about my fate...” and “Greatness, power, majesty, eternity, ruthlessness, necessity”. Karłowicz’s friends mentioned that his main source of inspiration were his hikes in the Tatra Mountains, and Henryk Opieński, after a conversation with him, noted: “In the form of a symphonic triptych, the author expressed what sang in his soul as a musician-artist, when, perhaps resting on the granite peaks of the Tatras [Karłowicz had been permanently residing for several years in Zakopane, at the foot of The Tatra], he pondered the greatest mysteries of human existence: about the eternal longing of the spirit, about love and death...”.

It is often noted how much film music composers owe to the creators of late Romanticism. One of the artists who combined classical and film writing was Erich Wolfgang Korngold, born in Brno. He was called a child prodigy, and Gustav Mahler himself spoke with great enthusiasm about his talent. In the 1930s, Korngold left for the USA and gained great fame as the author of music for Hollywood productions. An example of such success was the soundtrack to the 1940 adventure film Sea Hawk, from which a suite was later compiled for performance during concerts. The colourful, accessible and impressive Overture is a good example of Korngold’s style.

Italy’s Giuseppe Martucci is currently a somewhat forgotten figure. His atmospheric, lyrical and melodious Nocturne in G flat major is a reminder that composers from the Apennine Peninsula wrote not only operas, but also symphonic works devoid of programmatic elements. For this reason and because of German Romantic inspirations conspicuous in his oeuvre, Martucci is sometimes referred to as the “Italian Brahms”.

The concert will end with a performance of the colourful, sumptuous Suite from Richard Strauss’ comic opera Der Rosenkavalier. It was prepared by Artur Rodziński – at the time artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, who also conducted the first performance of the Suite in October 1944. The Polish conductor certainly had great sentiment for this piece: in 1922, he led the Polish premiere of Strauss’s work at the Warsaw Opera – it was later considered one of the most important events in the history of this institution during the interwar period.