In the 20th century, music composed in bygone eras continued to shape new creative work, even when composers distanced themselves from the past. This concert, led by Magdalena Ziarkowska-Kołacka conducting the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra, focuses on the dialogue with the art of the past. Baritone Jakub Borgiel will perform alongside the Leopoldinum. The programme features music by Dorothy Howell, Erwin Schulhoff, Antonio Vivaldi, Tadeusz Baird, Karol Szymanowski, and Grażyna Bacewicz.
The evening opens with the Nocturne by Dorothy Howell. This 20th-century English composer frequently drew inspiration from the Romantic era, and the piece selected for this performance is no exception. Next, the orchestra will present a movement from the ironic Fünf Stücke für Streichquartett (Five Pieces for String Quartet) by the Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff –specifically, the frenetic Tarantella. Brimming with energy is the Sinfonia from L’Olimpiade by Baroque master Antonio Vivaldi; after all, the work centers on the Olympic Games. This will be followed by the first Polish composition of the evening: Tadeusz Baird’s Four Love Sonnets (set to texts by William Shakespeare), which attempt to revive the spirit of bygone eras while employing a modern musical language.
The second part of the concert is devoted entirely to Polish works. Karol Szymanowski and Grażyna Bacewicz are composers who, at different times during the 20th century, redefined the meaning of Polishness in their own unique ways. The first piece to be performed after the interval is the brilliant, modern work titled Nocturne and Tarantella. Belonging to the lighter side of Szymanowski’s output, it is a masterful pastiche of the Italian and Gypsy styles popular in the 19th century. The evening concludes with an arrangement of Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4, a work that brought her a triumph at an international competition in Liège, Belgium, in 1951.