Fitelberg, Jerzy

Jerzy Fitelberg – Symphony No. 1 (1946)

(b. Warsaw, 20 May 1903 – d. New York, 25 April 1951)

Allegro energico p. 2
Andantino. p. 51
Moderato-Allegro p. 73

Preface
Jerzy Fitelberg was born in Warsaw on 20 May 1903. He received his early musical education from his father, the conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic and composer Grzegorz Fitelberg, and in the 1920s he pursued studies at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where his teachers included Franz Schreker and Walther Gmeindl. He became one of the many artists who fled Germany due to the rise of the nazi party; in 1933 Fitelberg moved to Paris, where he lived and worked until 1940, and then eventually settled in the USA, staying in New York until his death on 25 April 1951.

During his short but successful career, Fitelberg wrote a significant number of works, both large- and small-scale, in a largely neoclassical style that bore the influences of Hindemith and early Stravinsky. His compositions appeared at concerts and recitals in Europe and the USA, and he had several chamber and orchestral works performed at the International Society of Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival. He also received prestigious awards: his Second String Quartet won the first prize in a 1928 competition organised by the “Association des Jeunes Musiciens Polonaise”, his Fourth String Quartet the “Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge” prize by the Library of Congress in 1936, while finally in 1945 he won the award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his lifetime achievement. His works include the orchestral Four Etudes (1932) and Nocturne (1944), symphonies, concertos (among which for the violin and for the piano), chamber music, piano pieces, the children’s opera in one act Henny Penny, and film scores, including the one for Julien Bryan’s documentary Poland. The country and its people. Fitelberg also contributed articles to the American journal Modern Music. Among his students in composition was the American composer Raymond Wilding-White. …

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