Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)

[CaramelJones]

BTW, the Wilanow recording of the first Szymanowski quartet was once available on CD, but now out of print, I'm sure.

All the legendary CD recordings and LP transfer versions of this vaunted quartet are sadly out of print.   The good thing is - there are a lot of people disposing of their second hand CDs and buying inferior MP3 digital files

- The Carmina Quartet; Silesian Quartet, Varsovia String Quartet, Wilanow Quartet recorded both Quartets 1&2. 

On the so-so modern picks, the Szymanowski Quartet, Royal Quartet, Maggini Quartet, Bacewicz Quartet, Pendereck Quartet record both as well.

It can really put you off if you hear an average rendition, like the Royal Quartet.  I find Szymanowski virtually unlistenable when the string quartet labours the music with detailed phrasing losing sight of the bigger picture.

[Maciek]

Wait a sec! I just realized I have Wilanów in the second as well (on CD). So they were both released on CD, though separately (the first as part of a Wilanow-play-Polish-20th-century-music compilation, the second as part of an all-Szymanowski disc).

[CaramelJones]

Yeah that's right I think. 

They recorded one Szymanowski string quartet on a group of Polish string quartets (awful blue and gold cover) back in the LP/transfer to CD days, as well as a full Szymanowski CD.

The Wilanow Quartet are highly respected in Poland: they have a strong focus on modern Polish music.  Their recording of a Bacewicz String Quartet is a little painfully thin, but that is the limitations of the Polish recording studios over 30 years ago.  Until the Amar Corde Quartet complete cycle came out, that was one of the few versions of the Bacewicz Quartet available until the Penderecki Quartet played it in their compilation of Polish music. 

Seems like the market for this specialist string quartet stuff tends to hover around mass appeal and thus the interest in compiling CD releases with diverse material, rather than just concentrated material from one composer.   The exceptions are with big names, like Shostakovich or Bartok, who have a loyal following and so people expect to buy string quartet cycles in a box set, rather than just one CD with a piano trio or a violin sonata tacked on as a filler.

The Wilanow Quartet's interpretations of Wladyslaw Slowinski and Krysztof Meyer's string quartets are the best ones available at this time.  Incomplete ... but get them before the label goes bust and the CDs out of print 

[abidoful]

Do you guys know the recording of Neeme Järvi of the 2nd symphony? How is it- any worth....?

[abidoful]

Sorry- I was mistaken; it was Okko Kamu who recorded it! With the Copenhagen Symphony Orchestra

[Dax]

Thanks for that post.
I've not seen a review which manages to compare it with any other version. But I don't know the Dorati account of the 3rd Symphony unfortunately.

Total music lasts less than 49 minutes and there's a "bonus" disc which features Pete giving three 15-16 minute interviews in English, French and German (why, pourquoi + warum?). And it's not cheap. Not at all.

The highest praise comes from Mr Kenyon in the Observer (UK newspaper for those who may not know):

Amazing. At 85, Boulez has already extended his magisterial coverage of 20th-century repertory to Janácek and now he the exotic, sensual music of Karol Szymanowski, making it sound utterly gorgeous but transparently clear. His partnership with Tetzlaff and the flexible Vienna Philharmonic is perfectly suited to the lavish orchestration of the First Violin Concerto with its dazzling cadenza and the oriental chromaticism of the choral Third Symphony is shaped and clarified. He seems to place these Szymanowski pieces of 1914-16 in a post-Ravel Daphnis, post-Stravinsky Firebird mainstream of impressionistic modernism. On a bonus CD, Boulez discusses the music, in three languages! Definitely a disc of the year.

Fact: the interview in English is by Andrew Clements. There's an Andrew Clements who writes on music in the Guardian. The Observer is the Sunday version of the Guardian.

[mjwal]

They recorded one Szymanowski string quartet on a group of Polish string quartets (awful blue and gold cover) back in the LP/transfer to CD days, as well as a full Szymanowski CD.
The Wilanow Quartet are highly respected in Poland.

I have two recordings of Szym. Str. Qt #2 by the Wilanow: one on Aurora LP coupled w/Mythes - Kulka vln.(p. 1979) and the other on Schwann CD w/#1 and Mythes + Notturno e Tarantella - Gadzina vln. (p.1987).
I haven't listened to any Szymanowski for a while - the new Boulez recording sounds exciting and I may plunge back into this great composer's work. I well remember a time back in the 70s when I had just discovered Szym. for myself and bought the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (prduced in Chicago), a huge investment for me: imagine how amazed I was to find that Szym. was not included at all, while the baseball achievements of every piddling US team were chronicled in detail...

[snyprrr]

All the legendary CD recordings and LP transfer versions of this vaunted quartet are sadly out of print.   The good thing is - there are a lot of people disposing of their second hand CDs and buying inferior MP3 digital files

- The Carmina Quartet; Silesian Quartet, Varsovia String Quartet, Wilanow Quartet recorded both Quartets 1&2. 

On the so-so modern picks, the Szymanowski Quartet, Royal Quartet, Maggini Quartet, Bacewicz Quartet, Pendereck Quartet record both as well.

It can really put you off if you hear an average rendition, like the Royal Quartet.  I find Szymanowski virtually unlistenable when the string quartet labours the music with detailed phrasing losing sight of the bigger picture.

I have the cd with the garish gold and green cover. Great, great cd. I believe there is some spacial element added to the Lutoslawski (members sitting farther apart than the rest of the recordings?). Check it out. And the Meyer is certainly a bonus.

The Carmina has the most "bestest" recording I think, with silvery smooth playing (reminding me of the Silesian's smooth group tone?).

AND THE VARSOVIA/olypmia cd (which comes in direct competition with the first disc) is also, apparently, a must. The sound quality is totally different than the other two, having a luminous, slightly distant recording that reminds me of Nimbus.

Out of the three, the Carmina didn't make the cut (budget issues), but, it's one of those cds I'd get again.

[vandermolen]

Is 'The Song of the Night' (Symphony No 3) ever performed with a soprano soloist?

[Dax]

Incorrect though it may be, I do prefer it with soprano - that register seems to sound better.

[Maciek]

It was intended to be sung by tenor but the composer approved of soprano performances, at least to the extent that he let his sister sing it.

[Guido]

How does one say Szymanowski correctly?

[Maciek]

Ha! Not sure if I can explain it in writing.

shi- (as in ship)
man- (no good analogue in English, so "man" will have to do)
off-skee

[Mirror Image]

It's good to see that Szymanowski is getting some respect....finally! It's about time! I will definitely be acquiring Boulez's recording when it comes out. Hopefully, this will be the start of a complete cycle? I really hope so.

I would love to hear Boulez conduct Harnasie. That would be a killer performance no doubt about it. I would also like to hear the rest of the symphonies and choral works like his Stabat Mater. That would just be the icing on the cake.

[Ciel_Rouge]

Today I have seen the film by Wajda called Panny z Wilka (The Maidens of Wilko) and the soundtrack was... Szymanowski I liked it a lot, definitely worth further investigation, one of a relatively few 20th century composers that I like.

[Mirror Image]

Been digging my way through Wit's Symanowski recordings and they have proven to be excellent. I've already heard all of the Rattle set, which is really good, but it's good to hear different interpretations.

Anybody else here enjoy the Wit recordings?

[Mirror Image]

BUMP!!!

I've been listening to Boulez's new recording of Szymanowski and it is INCREDIBLY good. Man, this is so fantastic. The VPO sound so lush and sound like they are one with this music. Boulez has turned in a winner with this one. Also of note, Christian Tetzlaff, wow this guy can play!

I only hope that Boulez finishes a Szymanowski cycle. This recording is worth its weight in gold. The packaging is also just gorgeous. Great liner notes. This is a 2-CD set. The second CD has a 15-minute interview with Boulez discussing Szymanowski and also contains rehearsal excerpts.

[schweitzeralan]

There is a startling revelation in the interviews on CD-2, where Boulez says he first heard Szymanowski while a student in Lyon in 1942, a recital of Jacques Thibaud, who performed Mythes. Boulez was especially surprized by the first Mythe, "La Fontaine d'Arethuse," as surprised by Mythes as we was upon hearing for the first time the same year on the radio Stravinsky's Nightingale - until then Boulez's musical world was Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin and Liszt.

Boulez's first introduction to modern music, in other words, was through Szymanowski as well as Stravinsky! Under that circumstance, perhaps the surprising thing is that he did not perform him much earlier. In the interviews he confirms what I had read in another interview, namely, that he belatedly turned to performing Janacek and Szymanowki because he had grown stale on Stravinsky & Schoenberg and needed a break from them.

Boulez rates Szymanowski very highly & deplores he is so rarely performed  - indeed expresses exasperation that Shostakovich would be played so much more often: Boulez's repertoire may change, but not Boulez himself, lol.

"Song of the Night" is the subtitle of the Third Symphony - more specifically the title of the poem by the Islamic poet Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (1207-1273), upon which the symphony is based.

No doubt Boulez's recording should be the most important one since Rowicki and Dorati. His approach is slow and majestic. His legendary clarity is still there (as with Dorati), but with a smoothness and refinement I don't hear in Dorati. Albert Hosp, in his introduction to the booklet, says something very perceptive about Boulez's conducting style: "... it is precisely his clear, almost impassive gestures that allow Szymanowski's highly emotional languge to unfold." I had heard the same thing in New York last January, Boulez conducting the Adagio of Mahler's 10th Symphony, Mahler's emotivity, I felt, enhanced, not repressed, by Boulez's sobriety.

Boulez dissociates Szymanowski from Debussy, on the basis of Szymanowski's mysticism, when Debussy is not at all mystical, even when he is religious. But I still find that, musically, Szymanowski is still a little bit of an Impressionist - but an impressionism broad enough to include the Stravinsky of The Song of the Nightingale and the Bela Bartok of the Cantata Profane, as well as people like Andre Caplet or Jacques Ibert or Florent Schmitt.

The Debussy connection seems especially clear in the Choral parts of the Third Symphony and of the Stabat Mater which, like Bartok's Cantata and Andre Caplet's masterpiece, the Septet for vocal and Instrumental Chords, seem derived from the chorus in the third of Debussy's Nocturnes - Szymanowski bringing to the form a charm - in the magical sense of the word charm - as well as a psychological and imaginative depth, that are all his own and utterly original.

In his slow and deliberate manner Boulez in the climactic part of the Symphony attains a power that could provoke un bouleversement. A recording to get drunk on - or perhaps stoned, opium-like.

After hearing Szymanowski's first violin concerto, does one not cease to rue Debussy's failure to write a violin concerto? And also Scriabin's for all that matters.

There have been many significant postings on Szymanowski.  Several have stated that his music has changed and has evolved considerably since his early work.  Personally I like the impressionisrtic style and patterns. " Metopes" and " Myths" evince the technique, the harmony, nuance and subtle persuasions. Listeners are convinced that any or all musical works that suggest impressionist style or technique reflect undeniable Debussyian influences.  I beg to differ. Gliere's 'Sirens," or Roslavetz's "In the Hour of the New Moon," or Arthur Shepherd's Second Piano Sonata are not Debussyian; yet these works do suggest impressionistic "melange."

[Mirror Image]

There have been many significant postings on Szymanowski.  Several have stated that his music has changed and has evolved considerably since his early work.  Personally I like the impressionisrtic style and patterns. " Metopes" and " Myths" evince the technique, the harmony, nuance and subtle persuasions. Listeners are convinced that any or all musical works that suggest impressionist style or technique reflect undeniable Debussyian influences.  I beg to differ. Gliere's 'Sirens," or Roslavetz's "In the Hour of the New Moon," or Arthur Shepherd's Second Piano Sonata are not Debussyian; yet these works do suggest impressionistic "melange."

I need to listen to the second disc of his Szymanowski recording as I'm interested why it took Boulez so long to record this great composer's music? It certainly is baffling especially considering how much Boulez likes his music.

[vandermolen]

It was intended to be sung by tenor but the composer approved of soprano performances, at least to the extent that he let his sister sing it.

Thank you. Does anyone know if there is a CD of the Symphony No 3 sung by a soprano soloist? I heard it as background music on a TV documentary (with soprano) and thought it better than with the tenor soloist.