Performance

The ballet evening to the music of Polish composers promises to be extremely interesting. It's been a long time since we heard and saw such a set of wonderful compositions on our stage. Compositions that combine highland folklore and love of music.

 

Wojciech Kilar's composition Koscielec 1909 is a symphonic poem written to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of Mieczyslaw Karlowicz, who died tragically in the Tatra Mountains at the foot of Maly Koscielec in 1909 – 3 weeks after his successful performance of Eternal Songs at the Warsaw Philharmonic. 
 

 

This is what Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska wrote about Eternal Songs: This piece is a truly personal statement by the composer, in which he also externalized his individual style. Although the poem is still close to late-Romantic works in terms of sound, it still strongly exhibits features typical for Karlowicz’s works: broad-breathed, lyrical themes with Slavic colours, interesting orchestration operations, or the prevailing slow pace combined with a freely, though dynamically shaped form.
 

 

Karol Szymanowski, on the other hand, imbibed Highland spirit and folklore from an early age. The composer himself wrote: ... when one grasps the true Highlander passion for giving mouldable shapes to everything that surrounds a Highlander in life, when one sinks in these rough, angular forms reminding those forged in resistant boulder – this music allows to experience the true face of unyielding, tough, specifically Highlander "lyricism", the bizarre "epicness" of the calmly undulating surface and the deeply hidden, almost theatrical "drama" of the content, finding its expression in the dance.
 

 

Thus, the spirit of the mountains watches over this evening. If we are bestowed with the favour by the gracious spirits of the composers, it will be an evening full of wonderful music and dance.