Silesian String Quartet - NOSPR

This is the 12th seasons  when the Silesian String Quartet is curating its original concert cycle at the NOSPR. The current edition, entitled The Strange and the Curious, will take us on a diverse and surprising musical journey. It is devoted to works that are rarely performed, strikingly unconventional, and distinctive in character. Each of them opens a new chapter, often turbulent in its history and always unusual in form and timbre. Over the course of five concerts, the audience are invited to discover fresh perspectives on the string quartet, including settings that extend the ensemble with additional instruments.

Not all quartets are created equal – and this will be made evident most vividly in the final concert of The Strange and the Curious cycle. The programme is devoted exclusively to contemporary Polish composers, yet the enormity of Aleksander Lasoń’s quartet will be set against the miniature forms of works by Mieczysław Weinberg, Paweł Szymański, and Zygmunt Krauze.

Aleksander Lasoń’s String Quartet No 5 is a monumental work – comprising no fewer than seven and a half movements (the title is therefore no accident, as will soon become clear) and lasting over 45 minutes. It was composed for a particularly distinguished occasion: the 750th anniversary of Bytom. That this composition holds a deep and personal significance for Lasoń is evident from his dedication of the work to his friends associated with the city. The work exhibits features characteristic of his style, such as melismatic lines and rhythmic vitality, while its emotional intensity is combined with a carefully conceived approach to quartet form.

A very different aspect of the string quartet as a form will be presented in the remaining works, each of which lasts only a few minutes. Two of them, which may be noteworthy, also carry the mark of a jubilee: in 1998 Paweł Szymański and Zygmunt Krauze composed their pieces for the Silesian String Quartet as gifts for its 20th anniversary; they were premiered at a special concert during the International Chamber Music Festival ‘Silesian String Quartet and Its Guests’ at the palace in Rybna. Years later, how will the quartet approach these scores? What fresh emotions might today’s context bring? We shall find out this spring at the NOSPR. To round off the last evening in the cycle devoted to Polish music, the programme will include Mieczysław Weinberg’s Two Pieces, a work that closes the anthology of his 17 quartets – the second such anthology in the history of phonography – recorded by the Silesian String Quartet.

[Julia Broniowska]