Szymanowski, Karol

Preface

Karol Szymanowski – Symphonie concertante (Fourth Symphony) for piano and orchestra, op. 61 (1931-2)

(b. Tymoszóka, Ukraine, 6 October 1882 – d. Lausanne, 29 March 1937)

Preface
In the mid-1920s Karol Szymanowski began to be recognized as the greatest Polish composer since Chopin and one of the leading musicians of his age. The honors started to pour in, including almost simultaneous invitations from Warsaw and Cairo in 1927 to serve as head of their respective conservatories. Though it meant a decrease in income, he decided in favor of Warsaw, and soon found himself embroiled in the typical administrative squabbles that beset composers in academia. He now had little time available for composition and, as a leading public figure in the new state of Poland, was increasingly subjected to massive backbiting from his conservative colleagues. During these years he produced reams of sketches for “works in progress,“ but hardly any finished compositions. Among this body of sketches were, in embryonic form, the three masterpieces of his later years: the Symphonie concertante (op. 60), the Second Violin Concerto (op. 61), and the ballet Harnasie.

In 1932 Szymanowski summarily resigned his post as rector of the Warsaw Academy of Music and became once again a freelance musician. This caused two drastic changes in his life: he now had more leisure time for composition, but also a greater need to concertize in order to augment his reduced income. In a burst of energy he completed all three of the above works in 1932, fashioning the Symphonie concertante into a concert vehicle for his own use on the many tours that occupied him until his untimely death from laryngeal cancer in 1937.

Thus, the Symphonie concertante for piano and orchestra, also known as the Fourth Symphony, is in fact a piano concerto in everything but name. Artur Rubinstein recalled being shown sketches for a prospective “piano concerto” in the early 1930s, but claimed that the material was eventually incorporated into the Second Violin Concerto. Whatever the case, it is known that Szymanowski worked intermittently on the new Symphonie concertante at his summer retreat in Zakopane from 1931 and only finished it in August 1932 after resigning his rectorship. It was premièred in Poznán in autumn of that year and given its Warsaw première on 11 November 1932, with Szymanowski at the piano and the orchestra conducted by his close friend and musical comrade-in-arms, Grzegorz Fitelberg. The work was immediately published by Max Eschig in Paris in a two-piano version prepared by Fitelberg (1932) and slightly later in full score (1933). It bears a dedication to Artur Rubinstein, who not only supplied financial assistance to Szymanowski in the course of their long friendship but took the new work under his wing, playing it fairly often in the world’s music capitals after the composer’s death.

Between 1933 and 1935 the Symphonie concertante was given no fewer than sixteen performances outside of Poland, and of these, revealingly, fourteen were played by the composer himself. Perhaps the most notable was a live broadcast on the BBC on 27 October 1934, with the orchestra conducted (to Szymanowski’s complete satisfaction) by a young Malcolm Sargent. The following March the composer played the work in Stockholm, Oslo, Bergen, and Copenhagen. Thereafter his public appearances were increasingly curtailed by poor health, and the work, which was placed in the “degenerate” category by the new officialdom of the Third Reich, fell from the repertoire. Since then it has mainly been favored by Polish artists, including two superb recordings by Artur Rubinstein, one with Alfred Wallenstein and another with Artur Rodzinsky, both of which have been digitally remastered and re-released on CD.

The Symphonie concertante falls into the classic three-movement concerto form – I. Allegro moderato, II. Andante molto sostenuto, and III. Allegro non troppo – but there the generic similarities come to an end. Like many of Szymanowski’s late compositions, the motivic work is extremely tight-knit, and the final two movements elide in a complex cadenza with obligato winds and thematic reminiscences. The piano part, the composer claimed, was made deliberately simple to aid his own performance; however, a glance at the cadenzas belies its alleged simplicity, and in 1934 the composer claimed to be writing a new and even simpler piano concerto in order “to leave my Symphonie concertante to you professional pianists.”

The first movement opens much in the vein of a Prokofiev concerto, with a broad, highly romantic first theme in wide intervals followed by a bustling and percussive second theme in narrow intervals ending in a violent collapse. At the recapitulation the pianist and orchestra switch roles, the romantic theme now being taken by high-register violins. An elaborate cadenza for the piano brings this challenging movement to an effective conclusion. The slow second movement recalls much of Szymanowski’s chamber music, with the piano playing gently dissonant passage of ostinato to accompany an obligato flute and violin. A cadenza based loosely on the romantic theme of the first movement, interspersed with luxurious figuration recalling birdsong, leads into a highly rhythmic third movement based on a fast triple-meter Polish dance known as an oberek. Here Szymanowski leaves the world of Prokofiev for the more approachable worlds of Ravel and de Falla, and the work comes to an end in a final bacchanal worthy of Daphnis et Chloë or La Valse.

Bradford Robinson, 2008

For performance material please contact the publisher PWM, Krakow.