Graźyna BACEWICZ (1909-1969) Piano works
Concert Krakowiak (1949) [6:41]
Ten Concert Études (1956-7) [22:48]
Two Études on Double Notes (1955) [6:09]
Piano Sonata No. 1 (1949) [18:10]
Piano Sonata No. 2 (1953) [17:29]
Peter Jablonski (piano)
rec. June 2021, Palladium, Malmö, Sweden
ONDINE ODE1399-2 [71:24]
Graźyna Bacewicz was probably the most important Polish composer between Szymanowski and Lutosławski. While acknowledging an obvious debt to earlier Polish composers, and to such older contemporaries as Bartók and Stravinsky, she was her own woman and developed her own idiom, which could occasionally be harsh but was not excessively dissonant. Her main instrument was the violin, on which she performed regularly and for which she composed a good deal of music. However, she was also an excellent pianist, good enough to perform in public on this instrument also, and she composed a fair amount for it. There is too much to fit onto one disc and so all recordings of her piano music have involved choices.
Peter Jablonski has made an excellent choice here. Indeed, I think he has chosen the best of her piano music, which has involved excluding some attractive but lesser works. We begin with the Concert Krakowiak. The krakowiak is a fast Polish dance in duple time, with syncopated rhythms. Listeners will recall – and Bacewicz would certainly have known – Chopin’s Krakowiak for piano and orchestra, the best of his shorter piano concertante works. However, Bacewicz’s Krakowiak is more Lisztian than Chopinesque, being composed of several sections in different moods with a strong element of display. It makes a good opener here.
Next we have the Ten Concert Études. This is a most imaginative and varied set. Each follows Chopin in exploiting a particular technique. So, the first is fierce, the second is very light and rapid, the third requires fast chording. The fourth is particularly interesting in being just a single line, which the composer said should be ‘not espressivo.’ The fifth is an Andante with three planes of sound requiring great subtlety in pedalling. The sixth also has complex textures while the seventh is playful but tricksy, with irregular rhythms over a stamping bass. The eighth begins hazily and atmospherically but a slow tune gradually emerges with bell sounds above. The ninth is a complicated whirl of notes while the tenth has a clangorous opening which leads to a kind of chase. Her piano writing is throughout resourceful and imaginative and the whole set seems to me to stand midway between Bartok and the études of Ligeti.
If it seems a shame that she did not increase the number of études to twelve, which has become the traditional number for these sets, there is no need to repine, as she wrote two more, which actually slightly preceded the previous set chronologically. These are études on double notes, the first of which has complex but melting harmonies while the second is fast with many skips.
We then have her two piano sonatas. In fact, she did not publish the first, which our pianist here, Peter Jablonski, prepared for publication in
2021. I do not know why Bacewicz withheld it, but she was obviously self-critical – she also withheld her sixth violin concerto, which has yet to appear. This first sonata is an impressive work. It is in four movements. The first has a sonorous opening followed by a tight argument with contrasting themes in a modified sonata form. The second is almost a funeral march though with contrasting consolatory passages. The third is a scherzo, somewhat like Prokofiev, with two main motifs which are played off against each other. The finale is a rondo, though with a thunderous opening and some contrasting episodes. The ending is abrupt.
Finally, we have the second sonata, which Bacewicz thought her finest piano work. It was Kristian Zimerman’s 2010 recording of this work which called international attention to a fine composer who had been neglected outside her home country. It is in three movements. Compared with the first I can detect some softening in her approach, with richer and more complex harmonies and an even more assured command of keyboard sound. There are three movements. The first begins with a short introduction and then moves to a fierce agitato, with complex rhythms and chords in the right hand set against ostinato figures in the left. The second movement is marked Largo and begins with a chorale, which is elaborated in a dialogue between the tenor and bass of the piano. There is a fugato passage before the final return of the chorale. The finale is a toccata, high-spirited, capricious and virtuosic. The ending is sudden – Bacewicz seems to like sudden endings.
I have nothing but praise for the Swedish pianist Peter Jablonski’s performances here. Not only is he in full command of the many notes and often complex textures but he articulates them and makes them musical. There have been other recordings of these works, and I have a particular soft spot for the recital by Joanna Sochacka (review). Not only is she Polish but she has made a particular study of the composer. Her recital includes not only the two numbered sonatas but also an earlier unnumbered one. She therefore has room for only a few études. Jablonski has chosen a better programme and his performances are really superb, even when matched against Zimerman in the second sonata. There are good notes (in English only) and the recorded sound is excellent. This is now the Bacewicz piano recital to go for.
Stephen Barber
