Until just a few years ago, the name of Grazyna Bacewicz was
all but unknown outside her native Poland, save for a few ‘in-the-know’
violinists. Her Concerto for Strings had the occasional rare
outing, but of the remainder of her output nothing was heard.
Her music is now enjoying something of a revival, with several
excellent recording having been released in the last two or
three years. Bacewicz was actually the sister of composer Vytautas
Bacevičius (1905-1970), who identified himself as Lithuanian
rather than Polish; the family being of mixed Polish-Lithuanian
ancestry. In Polish musical history, both chronologically and
stylistically, Bacewicz neatly bridges the gap between the heady
late-Romantic exoticism of Karol Szymanowski and the more modern
musical world of Witold Lutoslawski. Bacewicz was a leading
figure in Polish musical life as a composer, violinist and teacher
and she remains revered in her home country to this day. She
was one of the many young composers who travelled to Paris to
study with the great Nadia Boulanger and it is possible – to
my ears at least – to detect the influence of Gallic neo-classicism
in most of her early and middle-period works.
Her seven violin concertos cover the period 1937 to 1965 and
the recordings on Chandos were the brainchild of the soloist
on this CD, Joanna Kurkowicz, who recognised the quality of
these works and wanted to expose them to a wider audience. The
concertos on this very full CD (just under 81 minutes) date
from the years 1945-54. Chandos chose to present the first CD
(CHAN10533) of Bacewicz’s violin concertos back-to-front, starting
with the seventh (admittedly the most popular in Poland, but
the hardest nut to crack of all the concertos), following it
with the third, then the first and, lastly an overture. Curious!
This CD begins with No.4, then No.5, finishing with No.2. I
don’t understand why the material can’t just be presented in
a sensible chronological order; listeners can programme for
themselves how they might like to listen to it. I will review
the concertos in numerical order.
The Second Violin Concerto, like its immediate predecessor from
1937, has a strong tang of Neo-Classicism from the very outset,
with driving, bustling music of the sort that is characteristic
of Bacewicz. This concerto is by far the longest of all the
violin concertos, with the first movement the most extended
movement in any of the six available (No.6 remains in manuscript
and has never been performed), complete with a particularly
extended Romantic cadenza. The Romantic affiliations
are continued the lovely second movement which, for me, betrays
the influence of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, albeit subsumed
in Bacewicz’s own personal style. There is much lyrical writing
and a feeling of stillness that serves as a nice contrast to
the animation of the movements which surround it.
In her commentary in the excellent booklet, Joanna Kurkowicz
singles out the Fourth violin Concerto as the pivotal work on
this CD, describing it as “quite a monumental character: it
is a full-fledged symphonic work…”. This work was written when
the composer was a the peak of her powers and during the same
year (1951) wrote eight other works, including the prize-winning
Fourth String Quartet, the Symphony No.2, the first of her cello
concertos and the Fifth Violin Sonata. Kurkowicz sees this as
the most ‘virtuosic’ of the three concertos on this disc, with
each movement including a short cadenza and with much
technically challenging solo writing. The musical language has
moved on in the six years since the earlier Second Concerto,
with brooding Slavic Romanticism taking over from Neo-Classicism.
Harmonies are denser and more dissonant, but never intimidating;
1950s Poland was not immune to calls from the Communist government
for composers to adopt ‘socialist realism’ and this work treads
a fine but well-judged line between traditionalism and modernism.
Having premiered the first four of her own violin concertos,
Bacewicz never played the Fifth. An injury suffered from a motoring
accident forced her retirement from professional performing
in 1954 and it fell to Wanda Wilkomirska to give the premiere
of No.5 in 1955. The musical language has moved on again, with
more strident harmonies and a more compact structure. After
a suitably forceful, muscular and astringent first movement,
the Andante is truly remarkable in its harmonic adventurousness
and voluptuous orchestral colours. Quite lovely. The whole Fifth
Concerto, but particularly the Vivace finale, with its
constant changes of metre and lean orchestral writing, brings
to mind some of Lutoslawski’s earliest orchestral works which
were closely contemporaneous with the Fifth Concerto (Silesian
Triptych, Symphonic Variations, Symphony No.1)
and gives a foretaste of Bacewicz’s even more adventurous musical
language to follow in later works.
For those who enjoy other mid-20th-century violin
concertos such as those by Barber, Bartók, Britten, Prokofiev
and Shostakovich, this CD will give great enjoyment coupled
with a fascinating voyage of discovery, especially with such
committed, musical and well-recorded performances as will be
found on this Chandos CD. The booklet notes by Polish-music
expert Adrian Thomas are full and very informative, with Kurkowicz’s
appendix lending added insights from the performer’s
point of view. Why these concertos don’t enjoy greater currency
is, frankly, beyond me, as concert programmes would be the richer
for their inclusion.
Derek Warby
Joanna Kurkowicz (violin)
