Grazyna Bacewicz
Violin Concertos Nos 1, 3 and 7.
Joanna Kurkowicz violin
Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra
Lukasz Borowicz conductor
Chandos 10533 (2009)
1-3 Concerto No. 7 for Violin and Orchestra (1965)
4-6 Concerto No. 3 for Violin and Orchestra (1948)
7-9 Concerto No.1 for Violin and Orchestra (1937)
10 Overture (1943)
The recording is currently available at CHANDOS Records website, iTunes, Presto Classical, Amazon and Music Island.
|
|
Featured reviews:
"A generation younger than Szymanowski and half a generation older than Lutosawski and Panufnik, Grazyna Bacewicz is a revered figure in Polish music. The orchestral heart of her output as a composer is the seven concertos she wrote for her own instrument, the violin, and as this superbly played selection from them shows, they are wonderfully idiomatic works, colourfully scored and always interesting formally. The sequence runs in reverse chronological order on the disc; it begins with the seventh and last of the concertos, completed in 1965, four years before her death. By then Bacewicz had absorbed what she required from all the trends of postwar European music and synthesised it into an attractive idiom of her own, supple and keenly expressive. The third and first concertos reveal where Bacewicz had come from - late Bartók in the case of No 3 from 1948, late Romanticism shading into expressionism in the single-movement No 1 of 1937. It's an interesting collection, and Joanna Kurkowicz is a keenly alert soloist in all three works."
---GUARDIAN
"...Bacewicz' music speaks with unerring agreeable directness. Joanna Kurkowicz expounds some extraordinary solo monologues, opening up the composer's inner world like August sunflower..."
---LA SCENA MUSICALE
"...This will go a long way toward establishing Bacewicz as rightfully belonging to the ranks of her contemporaries Lutoslawski and Panufnik..."
---RECORDS INTERNATIONAL
"...Kurkowicz interprets this music with fierceness but also with lyricism in the slow movements , delights us with beautiful sound. The orchestra collaborates with her respectfully..." ---POLITYKA
"...No wonder this concerto ( No. 7) has become a contemporary music evergreen; it is fantastic, visionary, exciting, and belongs to its own special musical universe ... Kurkowicz who has recorded Bacewicz well before for Chandos – is completely on top of this literature, and the Polish Radio Symphony plays with authority and gusto...."
---ALLMUSIC
"....expressively played ... Kurkowicz’s largo phrasings are unabashedly sensuous ... Responsible for an earlier disc of Bacewicz’s violin sonatas, Kurkowicz may be the one who introduce a new generation of Americans to this composer’s beguiling creations..."
---AUDIOPHILE
"...these three violin concertos (she wrote seven), expertly performed by Polish violinist Joanna Kurkowicz, offer an excellent introduction to her music ... Bacewicz has the violin tug at a loose harmonic centre, creating fissures through which Kurkowicz pulls and teases, wrestling with the orchestra until it succumbs to her wishes, raucously ... this CD is really all about the stunning Concerto No. 7..."
---CYCLIC DEFROST
Performer's note:
The year 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Grażyna Bacewicz. Regarded by Witold Lutosławski as ‘a distinguished Polish composer of the twentieth century and one of the foremost women composers of all time’, and an accomplished violinist and pianist as well, Bacewicz certainly deserves much wider recognition than she has received to date outside her native country of Poland.
Bacewicz bridges the gap between the neoromanticism of Karol Szymanowski and the modernism of Witold Lutosławski. Despite her premature death at the age of fifty-nine, she produced more than two hundred compositions, including four symphonies, seven violin concertos, seven string quartets, five sonatas for violin and piano, concertos for piano, two pianos, and viola, and numerous works for chamber orchestra and full orchestra.
The idea of the present recording, of bringing together Violin Concertos Nos 1, 3 and 7, came to me after the simple realisation that these fabulous works for violin belong among the masterpieces of the violin repertoire and should be known worldwide. Yet, they are virtually unknown, especially outside Poland. The 1943 Overture, suggested for this project by conductor Lukasz Borowicz, seemed a perfect companion for the violin concertos. It is a beautiful display of orchestral virtuosity and powerful rhythmic driving force.
As I do her sonatas for violin and piano, which I recorded a few years ago (CHAN 10250), I find the concertos of Bacewicz instrumentally brilliant. Written by a violinist who knew the technical challenges of the instrument, these works are indeed difficult. But at the same time they seem natural and convey musical ideas with absolute clarity. It is obvious that Bacewicz herself studied each passage from the kinaesthetic point of view to provide the best solution for achieving the desired sound. Her choices of sonorities, articulations, tempos – even fingerings – in the musical text suggest a deep understanding of the instrument, which draws me even closer to her music.
One of the main characteristics of Bacewicz’s style is its energy, quickness, and vigorous rhythmic pulse; the music is full of life and speed. The great Polish conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg once asked Bacewicz, ‘When will you stop writing these fast sixteenth notes?’ ‘That is my style’, she replied. Indeed, her musical style grew from the nature of her personality. Bacewicz wrote about herself: Nature bestowed on me a certain talent and also a little something that enables me to use this talent. Deep inside I possess a minuscule, invisible motor that allows me to accomplish a task in ten minutes, that would take others an hour or more. Thanks to it, I run, not walk. I speak fast, even my pulse beats faster than normal, and I was born two months premature…
As a musician and as a person, I identify myself with this statement. I love the lightness and excitement of the oberek, rondo and Vivace movements of these concertos. I find the First Concerto very fresh and youthful; Bacewicz’s unique energy is already obvious. That energy resurfaces in the ferocious virtuosity of the Vivo of Violin Concerto No. 3, and it is unmistakably apparent in the finale [not actually labelled ‘Vivace’, but ‘Allegro’, in the score, so far as I can see] of Violin Concerto No. 7.
The interest which Grażyna Bacewicz took in Polish folk music comes through in the beautiful slow movements of the violin concertos, in which – from time to time – she uses original Polish folksongs. Their lyricism and melodic identity are precious for me, an American artist though a native of Poland, longing for familiar musical syntax. Bacewicz does not limit her exploration of folk sources to slow movements; in the third movement of Concerto No. 3 she uses a very well-known motif from the Tatra mountains region of Poland, an oberek that is raw, robust and fast.
The most complex and sophisticated work on this recording – and my personal favourite – is Violin Concerto No. 7. Here, Bacewicz shows a unique colouristic imagination, and the effect is stunning. The second movement in particular transports me to a world of surreal narrative, articulated by her resourceful orchestral instrumentation and, in solo passages, her brilliant use of dynamics, harmonics, sul ponticello technique, and combinations of trills and glissandos. The inventiveness of Concerto No. 7 puts it on the same artistic level as the concertos written by Karol Szymanowski, Alban Berg or Henri Dutilleux. The Concerto was among Bacewicz’s most recognised works, awarded a prize by the Belgian Government and the Gold Medal at the Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Competition for Composers in Brussels in 1965.
For me personally, this recording project is a celebration of a supremely talented composer and her fascinating, captivating works for the violin. My sincere hope is that generations of violinists, teachers and critics will be attracted to Grażyna Bacewicz’s œuvre – especially the violin concertos – and that the quality and originality of Bacewicz’s works will secure them the acclaim they so richly deserve, and their rightful place among the masterpieces of the repertoire.
---
Joanna Kurkowicz
[ return to Discography ]