Symphonic Concert

One of the Warsaw Philharmonic’s cherished traditions is the commissioning of new works from Poland’s most distinguished composers, and Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil’s Polaris was born of that very tradition. Its performance will form part of this year’s celebrations marking the 125th anniversary of the founding of the Warsaw Philharmonic. A pupil of Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Boulez and Iannis Xenakis, Pstrokońska-Nawratil has developed a distinctive idiom which she describes as “ecomusic”: the art of shaping musical form through colour and the movement of sound structures, inspired by the experience of nature. As the composer herself has said, “For me, composing is thinking in sound”.

Written at the initiative of Stefan Kamasa, Grażyna Bacewicz's Viola Concerto proved to be the composer's last solo concerto. Its transparent orchestration allows the viola to reveal its noble timbre to emerge in full, while at the same time challenging conventional notions about the instrument’s use. The première took place in 1969, after the composer’s death, with Stefan Kamasa as soloist and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Witold Rowicki. Kamasa later recalled his work on the Concerto: “In March 1968 I received the third movement. Over the following year I became so absorbed in this music that I hardly noticed when I had learnt my part by heart. All the more painful, then, was the news of Grażyna Bacewicz’s death...”.

The concert programme would not be complete without a work belonging to the very heart of the symphonic canon—and here the obvious choice is Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, one of those compositions that forever changed the way the symphony came to be understood.

Its celebrated four-note opening gesture—one of the most instantly recognisable in the history of music—becomes the germ of the work’s entire dramatic design.

From its terse energy, Beethoven shapes an expansive musical form, leading the musical narrative from the drama of the opening movement to the radiant finale. Every performance reveals new relationships between architectural discipline and elemental musical force, which is why it is always worth returning to this masterpiece, discovering it anew.

Piotr Maculewicz

Programme

• Grażyna Pstrokońska-Nawratil — Polaris for orchestra (premiere performance, Warsaw Philharmonic comission on the occasion of its jubilee)
• Grażyna Bacewicz — Concerto for Viola and Orchestra
• ... intermission
• Ludwig van Beethoven — Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67