Karlowicz, Mieczyslaw

Karlowicz, Mieczyslaw – Episode at a Masquerade, Op. 14 (Posth.) for orchestra / Completed and orchestrated by Grzegorz Fitelberg

(b. Wiszniewo [Lithuania], 11 December 1876 — d. Zakopane, 8 February 1909)

Completed and orchestrated by Grzegorz Fitelberg (1879-1953) from the composer’s manuscript.

Preface
Though his life was tragically cut short by a skiing accident in the Tatra Mountains at the age of 32 in early 1909, the surviving works of Polish composer Mieczysław Karłowicz reveal an ambitious and well-developed artistic voice who remains tragically underperformed. He was born in Vishnyeva, Belarus in 1876, to a wealthy family descended from Polish Lithuanian commonwealth nobility. His father was Jan Karłowicz, who is now primarily remembered for his ethnographic work, but was highly respected in many fields, including musicology and composition, and his mother, Irena, was a classically trained vocalist. The young Mieczysław’s formative years were shaped by the constant presence of music, and at the age of seven, his father arranged for him to begin studying violin with a private teacher. After his family relocated to Warsaw in 1887, he continued his studies with several famous performers, including Stanisław Barcewicz, a former student of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who was no doubt a pivotal figure in developing Karłowicz’s musical sensibilities. Issues with his physical health eventually forced him to give up the instrument, leading him to shift his focus to composition, which he studied extensively with Heinrich Urban from 1895 to 1901.

Karłowicz’s compositional output, which spans from the middle 1890s until his 1909 death is a diverse and sizeable body of work; particularly noteworthy are his six symphonic poems, which are richly orchestrated works that possess a potent sense of lyricism. These tone poems fit distinctly into the late romantic idiom and pull from the most grandiose inclinations of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Richard Wagner, as well as Richard Strauss and Alexander Scriabin’s experiments with extended tonality and chromaticism….

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