NOSPR / Koncz / Love and death in Spain - NOSPR

In Richard Strauss’ symphonic poem Don Juan, based on Nikolaus Lenaus’ text, the legendary lover seeks perfect love, and the impossibility of realising the dream turns into willing his own death. Iberia also transports us to the realm of imagination, this time full of Spanish timbre, created by Claude Debussy and clearly emphasised by Manuel de Falla: “The power of suggestion... borders on sorcery, when one thinks that the music was written by a foreigner, led only by a vision of his own genius.” The Symphonic Variations, Witold Lutosławski’s genuine tour de force in instrumentation, also leave the listener awestruck with a whole spectrum of orchestral timbres. An aspect of particular interest is that the concert is framed with youthful talents: Strauss was twenty-five at the time of Don Juan’s premiere – the same as Lutosławski at the time of composing the Variations. Moreover, they both included the aforementioned works in phonographic recordings they participated in. In Lutosławski’s case, those were made in the early 1950s, with the ensemble then known as the Grand Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, now simply known as NOSPR!

Agnieszka Nowok-Zych