NOSPR / Alsop / Requiem as a tribute - NOSPR

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“It is with greatest ease and willingness that I am working on this Concerto and, nota bene, I feel that this is going to be a first-class trick” – these words from a letter by Karol Szymanowski are proof of how important the Symphony No. 4 was for the composer. It was his unfulfilled dream of a “true” piano concerto. One of a pianistic tour de force, the first sketches of which he dropped to focus on the Stabat Mater he was working on back then. The moving „Peasant Requiem” (such was the title Szymanowski had originally intended for the work), born out of the pain he experienced after his niece’s death, it brings together religious ecstasy and a note of the Polish folklore to be heard in a recollection of the popular Bitter Lamentations resonating in the composer’s memory.

How different was that world from the instrumental Chaconne by Krzysztof Penderecki! The latter is an expressive musical tribute to the memory of the late Polish Pope. It was this piece that provided a symbolic closure for the Polish Requiem, which Penderecki had been working on for a quarter of a century – a monumental chronicle of Poland’s modern history, the melancholic finale of which contains both a nostalgia for the baroque tradition and emotions of a surprisingly romantic nature.

Róża Światczyńska