Once marginal to the canon, and still not fully understood in Poland, English music can surprise, especially when performed by the NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra. On this splendid night, compositions by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, and Arnold Bax will be led by Leopoldinum’s concertmaster, Karolina Podorska.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a German critic described the United Kingdom as “a country without music” – despite its political power, the country had not produced great composers in either the Classical or Romantic periods. Yet, things were to change. Riding the wave of European folkloric movement, as in Poland, revivers of native music emerged, and Ralph Vaughan Williams was one of them. His popular, short romance from 1914, The Lark Ascending, is a poetry-inspired idyll for violin and orchestra. The use of pentatonic and modal scales produces the characteristic folk-rural sound.
Edward Elgar, a composer of the older, late Romantic generation, drew on the Baroque concerto grosso genre in his Introduction and Allegro. In this 1905 work, the solo parts, in addition to Podorska, will be performed by Leopoldinum’s musicians Magdalena Ziarkowska-Kołacka, Agnieszka Żyniewicz, and Marcin Misiak. One of the emerging themes was based on a song Elgar had heard in Wales. After the intermission, we will listen to Arnold Bax’s intriguing String Quartet No. 2 in E minor from 1925. For many years, the youngest of the aforementioned composers was considered primarily a symphonist. How will he sound in a chamber setting, orchestrated by the musicians? This carefully crafted, contrapuntal masterpiece is undoubtedly worth exploring.