557168bk Szymanowski US 13/9/05 9:33 am Page 4 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) Piano Works, Volume 4 SZYMANOWSKI Nine Preludes, Op. 1 18:58 ( Variation IX: Tempo di Valse: Grazioso 0:42 1 I: Andante ma non troppo 2:11 ) Variation X: Andantino 0:36 2 II: Andante con moto 2:29 ¡ Variation XI: Andantino dolce affettuoso 1:30 Piano Works Vol. 4 3 III: Andantino 1:23 ™ Variation XII: Allegro con fuoco 1:48 4 IV: Andantino con moto 1:35 Nine Preludes • Sonata No. 3 • Variations 5 V: Allegro molto impetuoso 1:12 Mazurkas, Op. 50, Nos. 17–20 10:15 6 VI: Lento mesto 2:07 £ Moderato 2:42 7 VII: Moderato 2:51 ¢ Vivace: Agitato 3:02 Martin Roscoe 8 VIII: Andante ma non troppo 2:44 ∞ Poco vivace 1:30 9 IX: Lento mesto 2:25 § Allegramente: Con brio 3:01 Variations in B flat minor, Op. 3 11:11 Two Mazurkas, Op. 62 5:44 0 Tema Andantino tranquillo e semplice 1:04 ¶ Allegretto grazioso 2:43 ! Variation I: L’istesso tempo 0:56 • Moderato 3:02 @ Variation II: Agitato 0:30 # Variation III: 1:07 ª Valse Romantique 3:43 Andante quasi tempo di mazurka $ Variation IV: Con moto 0:13 Sonata No. 3, Op. 36 18:58 % Variation V: Lento dolce 0:58 º I: Presto 6:38 ^ Variation VI: Scherzando: Vivace molto 0:16 ⁄ II: Adagio: Mesto 5:09 & Variation VII: Allegro agitato ed energico 0:29 ¤ III: Assai vivace: Scherzando 1:02 * Variation VIII: Meno mosso: Mesto 1:03 ‹ IV: Fuga 6:09 8.557168 4 557168bk Szymanowski US 13/9/05 9:33 am Page 2 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) concluding twelfth variation, and from the wistful dedicatee, Sir Victor Cazalet. Piano Works, Volume 4 mazurka of the third variation to the serene waltz of the The delightful, if all too brief, Valse Romantique ninth. was composed in 1925 as a tribute to Emil Hertzka on Karol Szymanowski was born in 1882, the same year as maturity in a series of works written in 1915 that The twenty Mazurkas, Op. 50, were composed in the occasion of Universal Edition’s 25th anniversary both Stravinsky and Kodály, to an aristocratic Polish included Métopes for piano (Naxos 8.553016), Myths Zakopane in 1924-25 and were published in five sets of (Hertzka was the publishing firm’s resolutely forward- family in the Ukraine. He was the third of five children, for violin and piano, and Songs of the Fairy Princess four. The influence of the Góral folk-music of the Tatra looking Managing Director from 1907 to 1932). Only all of whom pursued careers in the arts, and displayed a (8.553688) for coloratura soprano and piano. Until the mountains can be discerned throughout, characterized discovered in 1967, its harmonic language offers keen interest in both music and literature. Owing to a leg shattering experience of the Russian Revolution, in by sharpened fourths and flattened sevenths, melodic perhaps the most overt display of Szymanowski’s injury at the age of four his early education was at home, which his family estate was destroyed, this was ornamentation, irregular phrase lengths, and the use of Francophile sensibilities. where, under his father’s direction, he began to study the Szymanowski’s most fertile creative period. Other key the so-called dudowa kwinta, a reiterated open fifth that Szymanowski completed his Sonata No. 3, Op. 36, piano from the age of seven. Later he was sent to his works written around this time include the Third recreates the drone effect of the dudy, the Polish in 1917. His last major work for piano, it is cast in a uncle Gustav Neuhaus’s music school to study both Symphony (1914-16) (8.553684), the First Violin bagpipes. In his book on the composer, B.M. single continuous movement while at the same time piano and theory. It was under his tutelage that Concerto (1916) (8.553685), the twelve Etudes (1916) Maciejewski remarks of this period that Szymanowski embracing the four conventional subdivisions of the Szymanowski was introduced to the works of Bach, and the First String Quartet (1917). took great delight in listening “to the music, cries and orthodox sonata: a dynamic first movement notable for Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and, naturally, Chopin. His It was following a trip to Paris in 1921, when noises, watching the happy dancers full of vigour, its elevation of the second subject to a position of first published work was a set of nine Chopinesque Szymanowski had the overwhelming experience of passions and sweat. Even the wooden floor and the thematic precedence, an elegiac slow movement in Preludes, written between 1896 and 1900, although not hearing Stravinsky play Les Noces at the piano (the two wooden cottage danced together with the Górals”. ternary form in which whole-tone harmonies published until 1906. In 1901 he moved to Warsaw for had met for the first time in London in 1914) that Szymanowski’s final return to the mazurka came at predominate throughout, a short yet metrically further study, taking lessons from Zygmunt Noskowski Szymanowski felt inspired to write a series of works the end of his life. The Two Mazurkas, Op. 62, were adventurous scherzo and a dazzling and technically in counterpoint and composition and from Marek drawing on the folk-music of the Tatra mountains in composed in 1933-34 and were his last completed daunting fugal finale, at the climax of which the first Zawirski in harmony. It was here that he established southern Poland. This third creative phase witnessed the works. One of the very few extant recordings of movement’s second subject returns in seamless friendships with a small group of remarkable musicians creation of the one-act ballet Harnasie (1923-31) and Szymanowski is his performance in 1933 of the first of combination with the fugal subject. who were all to become important interpreters of his the String Quartet No. 2 (1927) (Naxos 8.554315) these mazurkas, a piece he was especially fond of. The music, the pianist Artur Rubinstein, the violinist Pawel among other works. Szymanowski died at a Lausanne première of the work took place in November 1934 at a Kochaƒski, and the conductor Grzegorz Fitelberg. sanatorium in 1937 at the age of 54, having succumbed private concert in London, at the home of the work’s Peter Quinn Together with Fitelberg and two other students of to a tubercular infection. Noskowski, Ludomir Rózycki and Apolinary Szeluto, Szymanowski’s Nine Preludes, Op. 1, contain what Szymanowski established the group known as ‘M1oda is thought to be his earliest surviving works. The seventh Polska’ (Young Poland), in order to publish and promote and eighth of the set were composed in 1896 when the Martin Roscoe new Polish music. composer was only fourteen. All nine of these vignettes Besides the strong influence of his compatriot, are exquisitely crafted and possess an uncommon The British pianist Martin Roscoe performs as a concerto soloist, recitalist and chamber musician all over the world. Chopin, other key influences throughout melodic beauty. Providing a suitably arresting As a concerto soloist, he has worked with Sir Simon Rattle, James MacMillan, Kent Nagano, and Yan Pascal Szymanowski’s early creative life included the music of centrepiece to the set as a whole, the figurations of the Tortelier, among others. He has performed with all the major British orchestras, keeping especially strong links with Wagner, Strauss, Reger and Scriabin, as can be heard in dramatic fifth prelude, marked Allegro molto, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra with which he has appeared on more than ninety occasions. A close works such as the Symphony No. 2 (1909-10) (Naxos impetuoso, are particularly indebted to Chopin’s Etude relationship with the BBC has led to over four hundred broadcasts on Radio 3 and invitations to perform at the BBC 8.553683) and the one-act opera Hagith (1912-13). With in C minor, Op. 10, No. 10. Proms on six occasions. As a chamber musician he has appeared with many leading British musicians including the outbreak of World War I, Szymanowski returned Composed between 1901 and 1903, the Variations Tasmin Little, Michael Collins, Steven Isserlis, Peter Donohoe and Emma Johnson. For Naxos Martin Roscoe has home from travel abroad that had taken him to Italy, in B flat minor, Op. 3, remain quite strongly bound to recorded fours discs of the piano music of Karol Szymanowski, and has recorded widely for a number of leading Sicily, Algiers, Constantine, Biskra and Tunis, classical formal principles, with the variations generally companies. He was a professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music for six years (now holding an Honorary concentrating his attention on composition. Having by adhering to the phrase structure of the theme. The Associateship) and was also Head of Keyboard at the Royal Northern College of Music. He is the Artistic Director now discovered the music of Debussy, Ravel and variations are characterized by an incredible variety of of the Beverley Chamber Music Festival, and also initiated and directs the Ribble Valley International Piano Week. Stravinsky, thereby freeing himself from the clutches of mood and texture, from the hymnic simplicity of the late German romanticism, he reached his creative eighth variation to the virtuosic perpetuum mobile of the 8.557168 2 3 8.557168 557168bk Szymanowski US 13/9/05 9:33 am Page 2 Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937) concluding twelfth variation, and from the wistful dedicatee, Sir Victor Cazalet. Piano Works, Volume 4 mazurka of the third variation to the serene waltz of the The delightful, if all too brief, Valse Romantique ninth.