Big day in Polish music today, which marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and, somewhat more randomly, the celebration via Google Doodle of the 141st birthday of Karol Szymanowski.
Skrowaczewski, born in Lwów, was forced to abandon his dream to become a concert pianist after sustaining a hand injury during World War II. Nevertheless, music served him well. By 1946, he had already begun his conquest of the great Polish orchestras, becoming music director in turn of the Wrocław, Katowice, and Krakow Philharmonics. He also studied composition in Paris with Nadia Boulanger.
He made his American debut conducting the Cleveland Orchestra at the invitation of George Szell. This led to a music directorship with the Minneapolis Symphony, beginning in 1960 (the organization was rebranded the Minnesota Orchestra during his tenure, against his protests). After 1979, he maintained a long relationship with the orchestra as conductor laureate. For many, it would have been considered an honorary title, but Skrowaczewski really did return just about every season to conduct.
He was also principal conductor of the Hallé Orchestra from 1983 to 1992. He served as artistic adviser to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 1995 to 1997, and in 1988 he was composer-in-residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra’s summer season at Saratoga. His composition, “Passacaglia Immaginaria,” was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1997.
As a budding record collector, I cut my teeth on a number of Skrowaczewski’s recordings that were issued on the Vox label. I still find his Ravel to be particularly fine. I am also partial to his recordings for Mercury, including an “Italian Symphony” framed by some unusually fleet outer movements. In concertos, he accompanied the label’s most distinguished soloists, artists such as Gina Bachauer, Byron Janis, and János Starker.
Later, I discovered his Bruckner recordings with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken Kaiserslautern (now on Oehms Classics), interpretations that render the composer’s student symphonies with as much logic and dignity as his mature works.
Skrowaczewski lived a long and productive life. He died in 2017 at the age of 93. He conducted his last series of concerts in Minnesota less than four months before his death. On the program was Bruckner’s grandest symphonic edifice, the Symphony No. 8, which clocks in, depending on performance, at around 80 or 90 minutes in length. While there are plenty of maestros who’ve conducted Bruckner into their 90s (I saw Herbert Blomstedt do so only last season), I venture to guess there are few who have been able to do it without the aid of chair. Skrowaczewski remained on his feet the entire time.
Karol Szymanowski is regarded as the most important Polish composer between Chopin and the generation that yielded Witold Lutoslawski. He absorbed the musical influences of Richard Strauss, Alexander Scriabin, and Claude Debussy, but put them through his own creative refinery.
Listening to Szymanowski can be a bit like submerging oneself too long in a hot bath – the same low blood-pressure, the increased heart rate, the wooziness. Though the harmonies and melodies suggest the familiar patterns of tonality, the traditional framework has been almost wholly eaten away by the hothouse atmosphere. The music is seductive and dangerous, and one risks being overcome by languor, even as one is overrun by fast-growing vegetation.
It may be in poor taste to suggest that so much humidity was bad for the acute tuberculosis that eventually claimed him at the age 55. Find out more about him in this biographical sketch on Google’s website. You’ll note the “Doodle’s Reach” map at the bottom of the page indicates that the artwork is only visible in the U.K. and Poland!
https://www.google.com/doodles/karol-szymanowskis-141st-birthday
Parenthetically, I knew the composer’s nephew in Philadelphia.
Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin, boys!
Szymanowski, Violin Concerto No. 1 (1916)
The brigand ballet “Harnaisie” (1923-31)
Symphony No. 3 “Song of the Night” (1914)
Skrowaczewski conducts Bruckner’s 9th in Frankfurt
Ravel, “Mother Goose” (transferred at a low level, so turn it up!)
Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 4 “Italian”
