This is the second
disc that Naxos have released dedicated to the concert music
of Wojciech Kilar. The first was released four years ago.
Once again it is Kilar’s Polish compatriot Antoni Wit that
presides over matters, this time with the Warsaw Philharmonic
rather than the Polish National Radio Symphony whose strongly
characterful performances were such a feature of the first
disc.
Outside his native
Poland Kilar’s music is still little known in comparison to
that of his near contemporaries Gorecki and Penderecki, although
his work in the field of cinema and in particular his music
for Francis Ford Coppola’s movie, Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
has introduced his work to an audience outside the confines
of the strictly classical world. Indeed a quick glance through
the Marco Polo catalogue, these days a Naxos sister company,
will reveal that Kilar’s complete score from Dracula is
available for those who may want to explore the film element
of his output.
Kilar studied
at Darmstadt in 1957 and presented his early avant-garde works
at the first Warsaw Autumn Festival. They were a far cry from
the subsequent transition that his music was to go through
in the early 1970s when he abandoned atonality in favour of
a folk-influenced simplicity that has been the backbone of
his music ever since. The previous Naxos release focused principally
on the 1980s, whereas this new release takes us back to the
1970s for three works before bringing us relatively up to
date with the 1997 Piano Concerto.
Bogurodzica
takes as its basis an ancient Polish hymn, the same hymn
that Andrzej Panufnik had utilised some twelve years earlier
in his Sinfonia Sacra. Kilar creates a “fantasy” around
the hymn in which the music emerges from the distance by way
of a tapping drum and timpani roll before the chorus intone
the first lines. The hymn is subsequently subjected to strident
outbursts of dissonance - harking back to Kilar’s avant-garde
roots - and a staccato separation of the words that seems
to cross Orff’s Carmina Burana with Jerry Goldsmith’s
score for The Omen. A mood of peaceful calm is then
introduced leading to apparent resolution. This is broken
by the ominous return of the martial drum from the opening
as the music recedes into silence. It’s a striking piece and
one that seems to unite the extremes of the transformation
through which Kilar’s musical language had recently passed.
This work is quoted on the rear of the CD cover as dating
from 1979 but is shown as 1975 in the inner notes and confirmed
as the latter in the Polish Music Centre’s web page on Kilar.
Dating from the
following year, the symphonic poem Kościelec 1909
is a homage to the life of the Polish composer Mieczyslaw
Karlowicz. Kościelec is the name of the peak in the Tatra
Mountains where Karlowicz met his premature death at the age
of thirty-two in an avalanche whilst skiing. Whilst, as Richard
Whitehouse points out in his sleeve-notes, Kilar portrays
no narrative element in his music, the mood is predominantly
one of tragedy. The music slowly emerges with great effort
it seems from the gloom painted by the lower strings through
the long opening section. As is often the case with Kilar
the music progresses through a series of distinct blocks of
material including a resonant string chorale that calls to
mind Gorecki’s Third Symphony. This is before the
eventual tread of a powerful climax to the close: grim affirmation
of the loss that Karlowicz was to the musical life of Poland.
The clinging “grey
mist” that is Siwa Mgla envelops the listener
for an apparent eternity before the solo baritone enters with
what Richard Whitehouse describes as “texts derived from folk
sources”; the only clue we are given as to the origin of the
words. Eventually the mists are dispelled and a sense of new
found peace prevails, only to be shattered in now familiar
Kilar fashion by violent outbursts from the brass and percussion.
The calm eventually returns, although not before I found myself
questioning how many more works Kilar has produced along similar
formulaic lines.
The period of
around twenty years that separates the three 1970s works from
the 1997 Piano Concerto seems to have softened and
simplified Kilar’s language still further. We no longer have
the violent interjections that hark back to his music of an
earlier age. Instead, repetition plays a greater part. The
gently oscillating rhythmic figuration of the piano part continues
pretty much uninterrupted for the entire nine minutes of the
opening movement. The composer relies on brief passages of
modulation and tonal colouring for contrast. The sustained
central movement is based around a solemn chorale introduced
by the soloist at the opening of the movement. Beethoven is
clearly in the background here. The vigorous final Toccata
introduces the first fast music of the entire work, the piano’s
insistent rhythmic patterns ultimately propelling the music
to a dynamic conclusion.
The fact that
this latest Kilar disc has failed to engage me in the way
that the first Naxos release did is possibly a matter of familiarity
more than anything else. On first acquaintance there is certainly
an engaging quality about Kilar’s music yet repeated exposure
to it, in particular his music of the 1970s and 1980s, underlines
a somewhat predictable approach to structure and form. To
be fair the Piano Concerto has moved away from this, albeit
to an even greater simplicity of expression, yet although
the surface of the music is undeniably attractive, it lacks
the emotional depth and penetration of either Gorecki or Penderecki,
to mention Kilar’s closest compatriots once again.
Enthusiasts of
Kilar’s music and film scores can rest assured that at Naxos
prices, this is a safe purchase with Antoni Wit and his Polish
forces giving committed readings. Anyone wishing to explore
the composer for the first time however would be advised to
make a start with the earlier Naxos disc and in particular
the two substantial works from the 1980s that form the centre-piece
of that particular recording, Angelus and Exodus.
Christopher Thomas
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ArchivMusik
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Waldemar
Malicki (piano)
