Karol Szymanowski News
Polish composer (1882–1937)
1
- piano
- opera, symphony, classical music
- Russian Empire, Second Polish Republic
- composer, music teacher, university teacher, pianist, author
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2024-03-18
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2024-03-12 09:19:00
It's back: Classical Pride returns to the Barbican with a five celebration of LGBTQ+ composers and artists
After a debut last year, Classical Pride, artistic director Oliver Zeffman is back with a five-day festival from 3 to 7 July 2024, showcasing the breadth, diversity and depth of talent of LGBTQ+ composers and artists, past, present and future.The centre piece of the festival is a concert at the Barbican Hall where Oliver Zeffman conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in programme featuring a new commission from Jake Heggie with soprano Pumeza Matshikiza, Cassandra Miller's Round, Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 3, ‘Song of the Night’, with tenor soloist Russell Thomas and LGBTQ+ Community Choir, Saint-Saens' Piano Concerto No. 2 with Pavel Kolesnikov and music by Tchaikovsky and Copland.At Milton Court Concert Hall, the Fourth Choir, conductor Nicholas Chalmers will be focusing on the relationship between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears in My Beloved Man featuring music by Britten, Barber, Imogen Holst, Barber and more.There is a free performance of Julius Eastman’s Gay […]
2024-03-08 09:15:00
A vivid account of Szymanowski's rarely performed Harnasie from the LPO, with a visual installation from Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams that never quite matched the terrific music
Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body For Harnasie - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: Mark Allan)Tania León: Raíces, Ravel: La Valse, Wayne McGregor & Ben Cullen Williams: A Body for Harnasie (based on Szymanowksi's Harnasie); London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner, Robert Murray, Vlaams RadiokoorReviewed 6 March 2024Szymanowski's rarely performed late ballet-pantomime in a terrific performance that vividly brought out the work's colour and symphonic depth, with a visual installation that did not always match thisKarol Szymanowski's Harnasie is one of his late, folk-imbued works inspired by the music of the Polish Tatra mountains. Harnasie, the ballet-pantomime which Szymanowski worked on from 1923 to 1931, not only uses the music but sets its story in the Tatra mountains too. It remains, however, an unjustly neglected work. On 6 March 2024 at the Royal Festival Hall, Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra gave us a […]
2024-03-07 16:08:29
Royal Festival Hall, LondonTonight’s Tania León premiere and reconceptualised Szymanowski ballet made a heady combination, with no need for technical trickeryKeen to think outside the box, the London Philharmonic Orchestra is presenting a month-long festival exploring the ways humans experience and express themselves though music. On paper, Dance Reimagined was a bright idea: three works with movement at their heart, including a world premiere from LPO composer-in-residence Tania León and Wayne McGregor’s reinvention of a Szymanowski ballet in collaboration with sculptural designer, film-maker and AI developer Ben Cullen Williams.Raíces, Spanish for “origins”, is an exploration of León’s heritage which, she explains, is Spanish, Cuban, Chinese and French: “Like a jambalaya.” Opening with wheezy ethereal strings, the music moved in and out of vistas, some urban, one a steamy forest bristling with birdsong. Although there were clear echoes of Latin and jazz, the music was shifty, its syncopations frequently catching the ear […]
2024-02-16 15:10:00
Batiashvili/BPO/Petrenko - Brahms, Szymanowski, and Strauss, 15 February 2024
Philharmonie Brahms: Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81 Symanowski: Violin Concerto no.1, op.35 Strauss: Symphonia Domestica, op.53 Lisa Batiashvili (violin)Berlin Philharmonic OrchestraKirill Petrenko (conductor)Image: Lena Laine For me, the highlight of this concert from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was the performance of Szymanowski’s First Violin Concerto, for which they were joined by the equally outstanding violinist Lisa Batiashvili. Almost any few bars – the sound and the direction it took – would have been enough to justify attendance; it was not, though, necessary to choose. Its opening, a fairyland in which orchestral children of Mendelssohn and Debussy took flight to the emergent strains of a silken violin line spun with longing and languor presaged what was to come, such interactions, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral the stuff on which dreams were made on—at quite a temperature. Whatever its twists and turns, there was no doubting the musical line […]
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