Poland is in bloom! This Saturday on “The Lost Chord,” find refreshment in musical discoveries by four Polish composers.
We’ll hear a Fantasy for Cello and Piano by Alexandre Tansman. Tansman spent most of his career in Paris, with an interlude during the war years in the United States. Here, he met Arnold Schoenberg, wrote film scores, and developed an affection for American jazz. Still, his most enduring influences were those of his Polish and Jewish roots.
Hyper-romantic Mieczyslaw Karlowicz lived his life at such a heightened emotional pitch that he was perhaps fated to die young. His music certainly tends in that direction, occupied as most of it is with ecstasy and death. “A Sad Tale,” his last completed work, is a contemplation of suicide. Karlowicz himself was killed in an avalanche while hiking in the Tatras. He was 32 years-old.
On a lighter note, we’ll enjoy choral music by Andrzej Koszewski – his “Kaszuby Suite,” steeped in folk traditions of northwestern Poland – and a neoclassical woodwind quintet by Wojciech Kilar, who is probably best known in the West for his film scores, including those for “Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula,’” “The Portrait of a Lady,” and “The Pianist.”
It’s a flowering of Polish music on “Poland Spring,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu See less
“Poland Spring” on “The Lost Chord”
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8 responses to ““Poland Spring” on “The Lost Chord””
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Thank you! One of the reasons I used to listen to the radio station which was your former employer, is that the then hosts appreciated the depth and breadth of Polish classical music, and played a healthy variety regularly. Sadly that is no longer the case and that station has sacrificed much of its originality.
I look forward to hearing this program!-
Claire Pula Yeah, there was more variety on the station back then, and the local hosts were pretty much given autonomy, so we could play longer works by lesser-heard composers, if we wanted. Bill Zagorski played all kinds of music, of course, but he often included works by Slavic composers in his programs. And if we had a big orchestral work by Paderewski in the library, I was curious to hear it! The then-program director wasn’t on the air all that much, which was probably a good thing, because she had a very narrow comfort zone. The only Polish music you would ever encounter on one of her shifts would have been by the occasional polonaise by Chopin. For her to play Wieniawski would have been like heavy metal.
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Agreed!
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Edith Pula
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Classic Ross Amico I met Tansman in Siena in 1977, when he came to visit Oscar Ghiglia, who had been Segovia’s assistant for the summer guitar class there before taking over a few years before I arrived to study with him. I remember Tansman as being very gentle and polite. His guitar music is really quite wonderful!
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Michael Newman Wow! That’s great, Michael. I have to say, I am totally unfamiliar with Tansman’s guitar music. I’ll see what I can come up with on the google in a quiet moment. Can you believe in 2009 someone at Chandos Records went to the trouble to airbrush out his cigarette?Media: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1861708154748239&set=p.1861708154748239&type=3
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I recall that you introduced me to the music of Karlowicz some years ago. I also recall that his death in the avalanche was memorialized in a symphonic poem by Kilar.
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Joel Wagoner Yes! Somehow, I have yet to juxtapose Kilar’s memorial with, say, Karlowicz’s “Eternal Songs” – one of his works overtly tied to his ruminative walks in the Tatra Mountains – or the “Sorrowful Tale” I programmed this week. I remember talking on the air once about Karlowicz’s gloomy disposition and pessimistic nature and for some reason, when I got to the part about the avalanche, I got on a laughing jag, and I could not stop. The poetic justice of the manner of his demise just struck me as hilarious. I tried to stop, but you know how it is – it’s like laughing in church or at a funeral or during a serious moment in a play – the more inappropriate it seemed, the harder it was to suppress it. When you’re in the studio, you’re always supposed to pot down for a cough or a sneeze or to clear your throat – at least, you do if you’re a professional – but what do you do when you can’t stop laughing? I suppose there are worse things. If anyone was offended, I never heard about it.
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