Bartók, Janácek, Szymanowski

Description

The influence of folk music is crucial in this new recording by pianist Piotr Anderszewski. The second book of Janacek's "On an overgrown path" (a collection named after a traditional Moravian wedding song), six of Szymanowski's 20 mazurkas, and Bartok's 14 Bagatelles. Szymanowski's eclectic spirit is evident in the mazurkas, composed during the prosperous interwar period when Poland was an autonomous state. Often chromatically adventurous, sometimes elusive, they fuse the traditional mazurka and Chopin's influence with elements of the Goral music from the highlands of southern Poland. Piotr Anderszewski speaks of primitive incantations, both ecstatic and severe in their beauty. "The works on this album are imbued with a sense of rebellion," says Anderszewski, himself a native of Warsaw. "There is no room here for stylization or decorum. These works probe the very roots of music." The influence of folk music is crucial in the three sets of pieces on the album: the second book of Janacek's On an overgrown path (a collection named after a traditional Moravian wedding song), six of Szymanowski's 20 mazurkas, and Bartók's 14 Bagatelles, which the composer describes as "a reaction against the exuberance of 19th-century Romantic piano music, a style stripped of all superfluous decorative elements, deliberately using the most restricted technical means." The pieces by Janacek and Bartók date from around the 1910s, while Szymanowski's mazurkas were published between 1926 and 1931. It also happens that Janacek and Bartók were still establishing their reputations—Bartók was in his twenties, but Janacek, whose genius blossomed late, was already in his fifties. By the time he composed his mazurkas, Szymanowski (born in 1882, a year after Bartók) had already explored a diversity of idioms and genres and held the prestigious position of director of the Warsaw Conservatory in the late 1920s. Szymanowski's eclectic spirit is evident in the mazurkas. The mazurka, a dance in triple time with a distinctive displaced accent, originates from central Poland—the region around Warsaw. Some of Chopin's most personal and original inspirations are found in the dozens of mazurkas he wrote while exiled from his native country, which did not even officially exist as a unified state between 1795 and 1918. In contrast, Szymanowski composed his mazurkas during the peaceful interwar period of Poland as an autonomous state. Often chromatically adventurous, sometimes elusive, they fuse the traditional mazurka and Chopin's influence with elements of the Goral music from the highlands of southern Poland, notably a scale with a sharpened fourth and flattened seventh and the use of perfect fifths as a drone. Piotr Anderszewski speaks of "the primitive incantations of the music, both ecstatic and severe in their beauty."