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Post by jk on Nov 27, 2021 5:08:05 GMT -5
First off, folks: I'm always more than a little apprehensive about starting new non-BB threads on this seriously BB-focused forum. I've even withdrawn a couple that were clearly going nowhere. Like most of my others, this one is hardly mainstream but maybe someone somewhere will get something out of it and then it will have been worthwhile. And if I've got anything wrong (it's not unknown!), please don't sit on it -- let me know. I believe it's what they call feedback.  Anyway… The title of this thread comes from the closing line of the Preliminary Address at the first performance of Alfred Jarry's absurdist play Ubu Roi on 10 December 1896: "And the action, which is about to start, takes place in Poland, that is to say Nowhere." (Translated by Simon Watson Taylor.) And indeed, Poland as a sovereign nation didn't exist at that time, having been partitioned among Prussia, the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian Empire. (My wife and I have been taking a fascinating online course in Polish history, and whereas she wrote down most of the salient facts and consequently remembers them, yours truly can only recall the odd particle of information that somehow got lodged in his brain -- and this happens to be one of them. Of course, it helps to take an interest in the curious body of work by the Frenchman * Jarry*, who died aged just 34.) Think Poland and which composer first comes to mind? Frédéric Chopin, of course, who wrote primarily for solo piano, being a virtuoso pianist himself. Here's fellow countryman and piano virtuoso * Ignacy Jan Paderewski* playing Chopin's Mazurka in A Minor, Op. 17 No. 4 (2) in a recording made some six years before Poland regained its independence in 1918: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frédéric_Chopin |
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Post by jk on Nov 28, 2021 4:53:49 GMT -5
Poland has more to offer than just "classical" music. Indeed, metal of all strains as well as jazz are well represented genres. More on those another time. Perhaps the most famous "classical" piece written by a modern Polish composer is the heart-rending Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki (1933–2010). This is the second movement, "Lento e largo—Tranquillissimo", from the million-selling 1992 Nonesuch recording by the soprano Dawn Upshaw with the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman: No, Mother, do not weep, Most chaste Queen of Heaven Support me always. "Zdrowas Mario." Prayer inscribed [in Polish] on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of "Palace", the Gestapo's headquarters in Zadopane; beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words "18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.") "Zdrowas Mario" (Ave Maria) [is] the opening of the Polish prayer to the Holy Mother. [ Source] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Górecki) |
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Post by jk on Dec 1, 2021 6:45:08 GMT -5
The reasons for this thread, as if any were needed, are twofold. One of my grandparents was Polish, and the little dog we looked after until his passing in March this year also came from Poland, indeed not too far from Kielce, the birthplace in 1958 of the composer and jazz pianist Włodek (Włodzimierz) Pawlik. In 2011, the Wlodek Pawlik Trio collaborated with Randy Brecker and the Kalisz Philharmonic Orchestra under Adam Klocek on Night in Calisia, an album written by Pawlik that won him a Grammy Award three years later. This is the title track: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_in_Calisia |
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Post by jk on Dec 19, 2021 6:07:30 GMT -5
Krzysztof Penderecki's overwhelming Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (for 52 strings) opened up an entirely new world of sound and took a quantum leap forward in string technique. I first heard this polarizing work on the radio in 1962, a year after it had been written. (It may well have been its first performance in the UK.) As a then recent convert to orchestral music by the likes of Beethoven and Rimsky-Korsakov, I couldn't believe my ears! The wiki page is illuminating, to say nothing of the * score*: This is the version I own, with Bruno Maderna conducting members of the Rome Symphony Orchestra: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_Hiroshima |
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Post by jk on Jan 7, 2022 8:53:36 GMT -5
Just to show Polish music isn't all serious and/or sad, here are Bayer Full (which according to Wikipedia is a "slang expression and could be translated as 'tommy rot' or 'poppycock'." They play what was later named Disco Polo, a term inspired by Italo Disco. "Majteczki w kropeczki" means "polka dot panties". No idea who's playing and singing on this single of unknown date -- it seems Bayer Full has had some 50 members over the past 35 years! I can't link the page in question, as it has pictures of willies on it. Of the 15 or so awards they've apparently won, I see 1993's Special Award of the Żywiec Brewery consisted of 2000 cans of beer!  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_Full |
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Post by jk on Jan 19, 2022 4:13:01 GMT -5
My last post in this mini-thread (bar a miracle) [was], appropriately, a Krakowiak, "a fast, syncopated Polish dance in duple time from the region of Krakow and Little Poland." (Appropriately, because my Polish ancestors came from this region.) The extensive and most enlightening YouTube blurb continues:
"This dance is known to imitate horses, the steps mimic their movement, for horses were well loved in the Krakow region of Poland for their civilian as well as military use. It became a popular ballroom dance in Vienna (Krakauer) and Paris (Cracovienne)—where, with the polonaise and the mazurka, it signalled a Romantic sensibility of sympathy towards a picturesque, distant, and oppressed nation—and in Russia, a krakoviak is featured in Mikhail Glinka's [opera] A Life for the Tsar (1836).
"The first printed Krakowiak appeared in Franciszek Mirecki's album for the piano, Krakowiaks Offered to the Women of Poland (Warsaw, 1816).
"Frédéric Chopin produced a bravura concert krakowiak in his Grand Rondeau de Concert Rondo á la Krakowiak in F major for piano and orchestra (Op. 14, 1828).
"In terms of its choreography, the krakowiak is set for several couples, among whom the leading male dancer sings and indicates the steps. According to the description in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the krakowiak is directed by the leading man from the first pair. As they approach the band, 'the man, tapping his heels or dancing a few steps, sings a melody from an established repertory with newly improvised words addressed to his partner. The band follows the melody, and the couples move off in file and form a circle (with the leading couple back at the band). Thereafter verses are sung and played in alternation, the couples circulating during the played verses.'"
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Post by jk on Feb 25, 2022 9:22:40 GMT -5
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860–1941) enjoyed an extraordinary career -- and not only as a virtuoso pianist. He became the first Prime Minister of independent Poland, signing the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of his country in 1919. And he composed, often on a grand scale. Written between 1903 and 1908, his epic Symphony in B Minor, Op. 24 ("Polonia") is scored for a large orchestra whose forces include an organ, three (!) contrabass sarrusophones in E-flat and a "Tonitruone" or thunder sheet, described by an uncredited source as "a percussive musical instrument devised in 1908 by Ignace Paderewski to suggest the sound of distant thunder." Right at the very end of the turbulent first movement (Adagio maestoso), in the 24th minute, is a magical passage for organ alone. It is played here by the Lviv National Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bohdan Boguszewski: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_in_B_minor_(Paderewski) |
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Post by jk on May 4, 2022 3:40:10 GMT -5
Perhaps the most famous "classical" piece written by a modern Polish composer is the heart-rending Symphony of Sorrowful Songs by Henryk Górecki (1933–2010). This is the second movement, "Lento e largo—Tranquillissimo", from the million-selling 1992 Nonesuch recording by the soprano Dawn Upshaw with the London Sinfonietta conducted by David Zinman: No, Mother, do not weep, Most chaste Queen of Heaven Support me always. "Zdrowas Mario." Prayer inscribed [in Polish] on wall 3 of cell no. 3 in the basement of "Palace", the Gestapo's headquarters in Zadopane; beneath is the signature of Helena Wanda Blazusiakówna, and the words "18 years old, imprisoned since 26 September 1944.") "Zdrowas Mario" (Ave Maria) [is] the opening of the Polish prayer to the Holy Mother. [ Source] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_(Górecki)Today is the day the Dutch remember those who died during armed conflicts from 1940 (the year NL entered WWII) to the present. In the evening, from 6 PM onwards, Dutch flags are hung everywhere at half-staff as a sign of respect, culminating in two minutes’ silence at 8 PM. This morning, Dutch classical radio played this movement (in this version) and its message rings as grimly true today as it did when released in 1992, to say nothing of the 50 years before that. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_of_the_Dead |
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