Beautification is a concert of solo and chamber instrumental works by Jagoda Szmytka, composer-in-residence of the 35th Musica Polonica Nova, and an accompanying exhibition of sketches and drawings that the artist created at the same time as composing the music. Four of the six featured pieces were written specifically for violinist Marta Piórkowska, cellist Leo Morella, and guitarist Samuel Toro Pérez. In addition to the new pieces, two older works will be performed, recently revised by Szmytka.
As Szmytka explains, while working on the fantasy of Growing Beautiful with Samuel, she rediscovered and learned the idiom of the electric guitar “through their hands”. She herself brought to the meetings her interest in polyphonic structures and the initial concept of the piece, in which each “part” was to be defined by a unique type of sonic material. She wrote f* for music from beginning to end, bar by bar, following her inner hearing of the flow of imaginative musical shapes. Beauty, in the context of the concert’s theme, refers to a codified criterion of proportion or a set of principles that determine whether a work of art is perceived as harmonious.
The Variations on a Theme by Forsythe for solo cello, dedicated to Leo Morell, arose from, among other things, the influence of William Forsythe’s ballet In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, and Gauthier Capuçon’s beautiful performance of Thierry Escaich’s Cello Concerto No. 2. The evening’s closing work, körperwelten, is a study of corporeality. Its starting point was a medical perspective on the functioning of the cardiovascular system of the living human body. When writing the instrumental part, Szmytka was inspired by palpation of her own circulatory system. The audio and video layers were composed exclusively from footage recorded during an ultrasound of her heart. Marta Piórkowska, along with Wojciech Błażejczyk, performed körperwelten in 2024. Szmytka was extremely pleased with the violinist’s playing. However, the performer suggested that the author transcribe the piece using conventional musical notation. When the Polonica resident composer took on this task, she realised it could not be done without losing the work’s identity. And so, the transcription attempt simply turned into a sketch for a new composition – figures and emotions. What does it all sound like? Join us to check it out. It’s worth it!