Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Polish Composers

Remembering Conductor Jerzy Semkow and Szymanowski

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we remember conductor Jerzy Semkow, who died on December 23 at the age of 86.

Semkow, Polish by birth, was a longtime resident of Paris. He apprenticed with Erich Kleiber, Bruno Walter and Tullio Serafin. He was assistant conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic under Yevgeny Mravinsky.

Later, he held posts as principal conductor of the National Opera in Warsaw, principal conductor of the Royal Danish Opera and the Royal Danish Orchestra in Copenhagen, and music director of the Orchestra of Radio-Televisione Italiana in Rome (RIA).

Semkow was the ninth music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra (where he served from 1975 to 1979), as well as music advisor and principal conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic (where he served from 1985 to 1989). He was a regular guest conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for some 40 years. His last appearance there was in 2009.

Though he made some respectable Beethoven and Wagner recordings for the Vox label, I thought we’d honor him with two works by his compatriot, Karol Szymanowski, both of them issued on EMI. We’ll hear Szymanowski’s “Symphonie concertante,” for piano and orchestra, and his Symphony No. 3, subtitled “Song of the Night,” for tenor, chorus and large orchestra, an opulent setting of poetry by Rumi.

I hope you’ll join me for “A Send-Off for Semkow,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6, or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Polish up on your Polish with Semkow and Szymanowski

January 4, 2015
Panufnik Centenary Warsaw Variations

Today is the centenary of the birth of Polish master Andrzej Panufnik, about whom I wrote a few days ago to promote last Sunday night’s “The Lost Chord,” which was devoted to two of his symphonies. (The show will be repeated Friday at 3 a.m. ET and then posted as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.)

Here’s a fascinating audio documentary about Panufnik and his friend Witold Lutoslawski. You’ll remember that Lutoslawski and Panufnik formed a piano duo which performed in Warsaw cafes, since it was the only means through which to share music during the Nazi occupation, when there was a ban on organized gatherings.

http://www.fallingtree.co.uk/listen/warsaw_variations

“Warsaw Variations” aired several times on BBC radio and was awarded a Prix Europa for Best Radio Music Documentary. Lutoslawski’s “Variations on a Theme of Paganini,” which had its origins in the piano duo’s repertoire, features throughout.

“I think they both had a sort of mission that people needed music, and they needed music more than any other time ever, almost, in order to keep their courage up.”

– Camilla Jessel Panufnik, the composer’s widow

PHOTO: Lutoslawski (left) and Panufnik (right), with violinist Eugenia Umińska. Umińska joined the Polish resistance, took part in the Polish Uprising, and survived capture to become a professor and later rector at the Academy of Music in Kraków. The photo was taken in 1942.

September 24, 2014
Andrzej Panufnik: Polish Music’s Sleeping Giant

Andrzej Panufnik is the sleeping giant of Polish music. He’s one of those figures, like Bohuslav Martinu, who always seems perched on the verge of greatness, and yet never quite achieves the full degree of recognition he deserves.

To begin with, his particular brand of modernism was eclipsed by the avant-garde experiments of his compatriot and friend, Witold Lutoslawski. Panufnik’s relationship with Lutoslawski dated back to the war years. During the German occupation, the two formed a piano duo which played in Warsaw cafes – at the time the only way to share live music in public, since there was a ban on organized gatherings.

In the meantime, Panufnik quietly produced subversive works celebrating Polish heroism and the resistance. Following the war, he was instrumental in the re-establishment of the Warsaw Philharmonic. However, increasing friction with Poland’s communist regime led to the composer’s defection, under hair-raising circumstances, in 1954. He was granted asylum in England, where he received a knighthood in 1991, the year of his death.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll pay tribute to Panufnik to mark the centenary of his birth – September 24, 1914 – with two of his ten symphonies, both of them markedly Polish in character.

His “Sinfonia Rustica” (1948, revised in 1955), as the title implies, is a work very much of the people, making use of fragmented Polish themes, meant to reflect the rustic, semi-abstract, paper-cut art of the peasantry. Not only the symphony’s framework, but also the layout of the orchestra, is meant to reflect the symmetry found in Polish folk art. Nevertheless, despite the work’s direct character, it was denounced in 1949 as “alien to the great socialist era.”

Whenever I listen to Panufnik’s “Sinfonia Sacra” (1963), I always think of Henryk Sienkiewicz’s 1884 epic, “With Fire and Sword,” set in the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. With its evocation of winged hussars in courageous battle against the Cossacks, Sienkiewicz’s monumental page-turner whipped readers living in a partitioned Poland into a patriotic fervor.

Conceived as a tribute to Poland’s millennium of Christianity and statehood, the symphony reflects the composer’s religious and patriotic sentiments. Panufnik based the work on the first known hymn in the Polish language, “Bogurodzica.” Throughout the Middle Ages, this served as something of a national anthem, sung not only in the church, but also on the battlefields by Polish knights.

Join me for these two symphonies by Andrzej Panufnik – “Andrzej the Giant” – this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Friday morning at 3; or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

PHOTO: Panufnik, adjusting to English life

September 21, 2014

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